


Lilies at the Funeral

by AJHall



Category: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie, Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: Detectives, F/M, Gen, M/M, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2229546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The announcement of Dr Hilary Mansell’s engagement to Julian Fleming, the much younger owner of Larch Hill, comes as a shock to her nephew Sam, who knew Julian at Oxford. But Julian’s mother Elaine is not merely shocked, but overtly hostile. Given the intense, febrile relationship between mother and son, something has to snap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/gifts).



Sam's initial sweep of the room showed no sign of his aunt. A pity: he'd missed lunch (the Henderson case again, blast it), so leapt at her invitation to tea with the alacrity of a schoolboy.

"Excuse me, sir." The waiter's murmur made him feel more than ever like an unclaimed parcel. He stepped aside to allow the cake trolley to pass, inhaling in the process a rich mixture of rum, vanilla, cream, chocolate and coffee which, in his famished state, turned him a trifle queasy. 

"Mansell!" 

Sam turned, to find a willowy, dark-haired man, some ten years his elder, standing at his elbow. Some friend of James? The velvet-collared jacket, frankly regrettable cravat and greenish pallor were more Chelsea than Mayfair, making him a fish out of water in the stuffy surrounds of Bertram's Hotel.

Which was probably what the over-coiffeured dowagers rewarding grandsons with cake for having survived another half at Eton thought of Sam, too. 

That flash of fellow-feeling unlocked his memory. He extended a hand. "West. How are things with you? How's the play doing?"

"Splendidly, thanks. I've just escorted my Aunt Jane to the matinée. Do let me introduce you. I told her all about that business with the Reitveld chairs, and she was quite impressed. Which, I can tell you, takes some doing."

Sam obediently followed West over to the far side of the room. Miss Jane Marple proved to be a fluffy, white-haired old lady, almost _too_ perfect a maiden aunt, as if West had held auditions for the role. 

She beamed at him. "So you're the clever young solicitor Raymond's been telling me about. I understand you saved him and Joan a very great deal of money. _Such_ wicked people there are in the world, dear me, yes. And, as I remember telling Raymond, when he was quite a little boy and wanted to spend his pocket money buying a pair of pedigree rabbits from someone at his prep school, if a bargain seems too good to be true, then it so often _is_."

Sam could not let the misconception pass. "Not a solicitor yet. I finish my articles next January -- that is, unless --"

He fell silent. The dining room was a space frozen in time. Those schoolboys cramming buttered toast into their mouths could have stepped straight out of the sepia XIs and XVs on the walls of the school pavilion. No doubt their names would fit as interchangeably on the chapel memorial, once the balloon went up.

The eyes twinkling out of Miss Marple's wrinkled, faded rose-petal face were shrewd.

"Yes, I do see." She turned her head to glance across the dining room herself. "I first came to Bertram's Hotel as a young girl, you know. Before the War. To look at it, you'd say it hadn't changed much but it has. Oh, yes, indeed it has."

She smiled, with a self-conscious brightness that chilled his blood. "But I'm running away with myself. Do help yourself to a muffin, Mr Mansell; you look positively famished (gentlemen so often miss luncheon, when they're working -- most unwise of them, I always think). I'm sure your aunt, when she arrives, will forgive my trespassing on her prerogatives; you really do look quite pale."

Sam blinked. "My aunt? How did you know --?"

West laughed, a high and rather affected bray. "I should have warned you, Mansell. Aunt Jane's quite a Sherlock in her own way. Scotland Yard call her in whenever they're at their wits' end."

"Now, Raymond," Miss Marple said. "I'm sure Mr Mansell doesn't need to be bored with all that. If you'll forgive me, you were obviously waiting for someone, and it seemed very unlikely that it was a gentleman -- gentlemen do make this foolish pretence of being above afternoon tea, though I've noticed it doesn't stop them -- ah -- 'tucking in' very heartily any time they get the opportunity."

Taking that as an invitation, Sam reached for a muffin and buttered it. Miss Marple poured tea, talking all the while. 

"In any event, a gentleman would have arranged a meeting at his club or in the smoking room downstairs. But you couldn't be the host, because you'd have gone ahead and found a table and started ordering if _that_ had been the case, especially" -- the faded-rose acquired a touch of girlish pink -- "if there'd been any question of a romance about it."

Sam baulked at commenting. Bertram's Hotel would be the _last_ place he would consider for a romantic tête-à-tête. Miss Marple's eyes narrowed a little, like those of a scientist whose preliminary experiments reveal a promising line of enquiry, though her tone changed not at all. 

"So you had to be waiting for a woman relative -- an older relative, of course: one who'd invited you out to tea since you were a boy, someone whose ways you knew very well indeed. Punctuality, you see. You know your aunt to be a punctual person; that's why you were worried, rather than merely put out by her non-appearance. Ah! You can set your mind at rest now. Here she is."

Sam turned, prepared to be amused at whichever elderly tabby Miss Marple had cast in the role of his aunt, and saw Hilary striding through the room like a borzoi amid Pekineses.

"Good Lord," he said, swinging back to Miss Marple, "you _are_ a Sherlock."

Hilary arrived at the table.

"Sam, I'm so sorry," she began, without preamble. "First, broken signals at Westbury, and then no taxis at Paddington. I'm so glad you haven't been stuck here all on your own, dying of loneliness and thirst." She nodded to West and his aunt. "Thank you so much for stepping into the breach."

Miss Marple looked brightly up at Hilary. "Oh, no need for thanks. I've been delighted to meet your nephew. And it's quite clear where he gets his intelligence from. You are very much to be congratulated, my dear."

A most peculiar expression crossed Hilary's face before, in a slightly strained voice, she said, "Yes, I think so too."

"Well, you're bound to have a very great deal to talk about. Indeed yes." Miss Marple nodded, though no-one had shown signs of disagreeing. "We shouldn't keep you. But I do hope, Mr Mansell, we can all have tea together properly soon. Believe me, I should like that very much."

They found a table close by the window. 

"Thanks for being around," Hilary said; an unexpected opening. "I was rather at my wit's end."

Now that Sam came to look at her, she was looking somewhat frazzled. With any other woman he knew -- his mother, say, or one of his tribe of cousins -- that would have been amply explained by the fraught journey. This, though, was _Hilary_. Apprehension squeezed his stomach.

"Look -- you are all right, aren't you?" Another thought hit him: she was, after all, a doctor. "Dad's all right? And Mother?"

She shook her head impatiently. "Nothing like that. Look, there's no easy way of saying this, so I'd better come straight out with it. I'm getting married."

The back-wash of relief was, in the circumstances, almost comical.

"You are? But that's wonderful news." He slid another look at her. While his experience of the matter was necessarily scanty, no-one would have pictured her as a blushing bride. Vague recollections of the seamier cases encountered while studying jurisprudence at Oxford flitted through his mind. "That is, it is all right, isn't it? You -- you're quite sure of the chap and -- and everything?"

Weary resignation tinged with defiance showed in his aunt's face.

"Julian and I are very much in love." 

He fought the urge to say _but that's not what I asked_ and fell back on conventionalities.

"Well, that's good. Julian? Do I know him?" Wildly unlikely, of course. He was doubtless someone she had met in that Gloucestershire backwater -- not a patient, of course, but perhaps one of the surgeons, or maybe one of the governors of the cottage hospital. There was a solidly County sound about "Julian" which would do for either.

She hesitated. "Well -- actually yes. It's JR Fleming. The OUDS man you and James knew at Oxford. And, to save you the trouble of doing the calculation, he's eleven years younger than me."

"Oh!" 

On hearing JR Fleming was marrying, the age of the lady would not have been the first question that sprang to anyone's mind. Not the mind of anyone who'd known him at Oxford, anyway. Sam hoped _that_ thought was hidden. 

"But surely no-one fusses about that sort of thing these days." 

Hilary smiled. "I assure you they do. But it's nice of you to say not."

A surge of unexpected protectiveness swept through him. "Look, is Dad getting sticky? Because you know what he's like. In two months he'll be behaving as if he introduced you himself."

"No -- that is, you're the first of the family I've told." She frowned. "It's the other family. Julian's mother. She's taken our engagement badly; to be honest, I came up to London for a break from it."

"Taken it badly?" His mind flicked back to JR Fleming as he recalled him from Oxford. "Apollo-class" James had said of his looks, and he supposed it was true, but no depth and a poor third, damn close to a pass, really. Sort of type who got into all sorts of messes in mid-Victorian novels. That twerp Basil, in Wilkie Collins, sprang to mind. Mrs Fleming should be on her knees thanking whatever she prayed to that someone like Hilary had condescended to give her son a second glance.

Hilary shrugged. "I don't think she believes we're quite -- ah -- 'their sort'."

Fury hit Sam with unexpected force. Not their sort? Hilary? He took a breath, and a faint glint of his normal humour reasserted itself. So much for his pride in not being a snob.

"What a pile of tosh. You need to set Great-Aunt Anne on her. 'One of the oldest families in Shropshire --'"

"--'and if we'd only backed the right King during the Wars of the Roses your father would be in the House of Lords and we'd all be paying calls at Buckingham Palace'," Hilary completed automatically. The joke was older than Sam; initially it had been his grandfather who should have been in the House of Lords. Its familiarity eased the tension. Hilary laughed, summoned a waiter, and they settled to the serious business of tea.

He had just embarked on an anecdote from the firm's outdoor clerk, who'd been at the Old Bailey during the Rattenbury case and knew details which had never reached *Notable British Trials*, when he saw he had lost his audience. Hilary was watching the hotel manager making his way towards them through the packed dining room with a fixed intensity which set hairs rising on the back of Sam's neck.

The manager reached their table. "Dr Mansell?"

"Yes?" Hilary's voice was coolly conversational.

"There's a trunk call for you, Dr Mansell. From Gloucestershire. Would you like to take it in my office?"

She nodded, and stood. "Sorry about this, Sam. I'll try not to be too long."

According to his watch, it was a little over six and a half minutes; according to his internal clock it was half an age before Hilary reappeared in the dining room. She was wearing her coat and hat. Sam cursed himself for not having anticipated it. 

He stumbled to his feet and made his way towards her, feeling the eyes of the whole room on them. 

She started speaking very rapidly as soon as he came close enough. "Sam, I've got to get back. Don't worry about the bill, I've arranged that with the manager, but I need to catch the next train from Paddington. That was Julian on the phone."

"Not bad news, I hope?" The conventional words came out, but his eyes were fixed on his aunt. He knew what her answer had to be.

"I'm afraid so. That is -- it's Mrs Fleming. She's dead."

"Dead?" The word jolted him to the core; he hoped Hilary was not accustomed to announcing bad news in that way to her patients' families.

Her face and voice were remote. In spirit she was already out of the room, hastening west.

"Yes. Some sort of seizure, I think -- it was a terrible line, and of course Julian wouldn't know the right questions to ask, even if he weren't shocked out of his mind. I'll get more detail when I get there and speak to Lowe -- no." He upraised hand forestalled the offer he had not yet made. "Don't offer to come with me to the station, please, Sam. I need to be on my own to think."

He would have gone with her to Cheltenham had she wanted him, and hang the Henderson case, but nothing struck him as more selfish than setting off to play Perseus to an Andromeda who had declined any assistance.

By way of salve to his conscience he walked her to the street and, to the doorman's visible resentment, flagged down a cab himself. He had handed her into the back seat and closed the door when a thought struck him and he leant in through the window.

"Look here, what's Fleming's number? So I can call, and see how things are going, later on. I take it you'll be there, and not on the usual one."

She paused, as if to say something, then nodded. She fished in her handbag, pulled out a pencil stump and a small, leather-backed notebook and scribbled. "There. Leave a message with the housekeeper. Julian's not -- that is, he didn't call from home."

"Oh -- sorry. The hospital, of course. Which one is it?"

Hilary's voice sounded even more remote. "Actually -- I said it was a terrible line -- I don't think he was at the hospital either. In fact -- look, Sam, don't tell your father this, and I'm sure there's nothing in it and everything will be sorted out when I get there -- but he sounded -- he said -- he was calling from the police station."

She tapped, hard, on the glass partition behind the driver's head. The cab whirled her into London's early evening bustle, leaving Sam standing in the gutter.


	2. Chapter 2

Detective-Constable Dermot Craddock climbed out of the car and adjusted the set of his tweeds. He reflected, not without irony, that having spent several years and considerable effort to get out of uniform he felt oddly naked walking up to the front door of Larch Hill in plain clothes.

That unease vanished the instant the maid showed him into the drawing room. The perfect proportions of this room would have made any uniform sit awry. 

"Good to see you, Craddock. Glad your DCI could spare you." The Superintendent glanced up from the piles of papers on the Queen Anne card-table. "More your sort of set-up than mine, this."

His gesture encompassed the hand-painted Regency wallpaper, the small but genuine Watteau and the Chinese porcelain bowl on the window-ledge.

Habituation checked Dermot's impulse to swear. This sort of thing had been happening ever since he'd joined the Force. It would doubtless continue until he retired with silver hair and a gold carriage clock, if any of them survived that long. Annoying but inevitable, given his accent and family connections.

"Are the family being difficult, sir?" 

The bay window framed a view of the park stretching out to meet a curve of wooded hills: Larch Hill land as far as the eye could see. A family with that much influence could make life hell for the local police. No wonder the Superintendent looked ill-at-ease.

"Difficult? Well, not in the usual way."

Dermot raised his eyebrows, but the Superintendent made a tamping-down motion with both his square-tipped, broad hands. 

"No. Don't want to prejudice you. But you'll meet the son -- Julian Fleming -- pretty soon. Ten bob says you'll see what I mean then."

Dermot nodded as if he understood. "And the rest of the family, sir?"

"Deceased was one of four children. A younger brother -- he went at Ypres -- and two much older sisters. Mrs Lamington, the eldest, came down from North Yorkshire last night. She's having breakfast in her room, since she didn't get in until late last night. There's not likely to be much she can give us. She's a recent widow -- oh, nothing funny, he was a retired professor with a long-standing heart weakness. Two grown up children. Last time any of them saw the deceased was at the funeral, a few weeks ago. Since then Mrs Lamington's been tied up sorting out her late husband's estate."

"And the other sister, sir?" Dermot asked.

"Still trying to get in touch. One of those arty ladies, I gather. Shares a decrepit villa in Fiesole with a 'dear friend' from Cheltenham Ladies College and throws lurid pottery. Barring Christmas cards, I don't suppose she's had any contact with the deceased in ten years, at least, if the son's to be believed." The Superintendent's tone gave no clue as to his opinion on the latter point.

"Not the most promising candidate for a murderer, then. That is -- " Dermot drew a deep breath, aware he was treading on delicate ground. "Can you explain, sir, how the suspicion of murder came about? I'm afraid the phone call wasn't long enough to give me more than the outline."

The Superintendent extracted an envelope from the pile on the desk and handed it to Dermot with an air of expectation.

Dermot turned it over in his hand. Addressed to a Harley Street consultant in a firm yet lady-like hand. Deep blue ink. Water-marked rag paper, the best quality, rich cream in colour. The first-class stamp had not been franked, although the envelope had been slit open with a letter-knife.

He raised it to his nostrils and inhaled the faintest breath of _Je Reviens_. Only then did he put finger and thumb inside the envelope and extract the two sheets of writing paper enclosed. They were closely written, on both sides; it took him some minutes to read them through. Once he had done so, he raised his eyes to meet the Superintendent's quizzical gaze.

"You see what I mean, Craddock? _Not_ a letter from someone with any intention of committing suicide."

"Indeed not, sir. A lady doing a great deal of very energetic planning for the future. I take it her son didn't know she'd written this?"

The Superintendent shook his head. "Obviously, if he had, it would have given him a pretty big motive to kill her. So, when we finally managed to track him down yesterday -- he'd gone up to Oxford to see some old college friends -- we called him into the station and sprang the letter on him, to see how he'd react." 

His tone changed, became deep, slow and thoughtful. "You know, Craddock, you think you've seen everything in this job. It's not even the first time I've had to tell someone that their nearest and dearest had been looking to have them locked away in a looney bin. But either he's the best actor ever born or it was a bolt that came completely out of the blue. I can see his face still. He was trying to keep a stiff upper lip, well, he's Eton and Oxford, what else would you expect? Still, you could see him crumbling inside, like a living corpse --"

He tailed off into silence. Dermot cleared his throat.

"How did you get hold of the letter?"

The Superintendent roused himself from some inner fastness of his mind.

"Eh? Oh, it was her maid, Agnes Jackson. A bright girl, that one, not at all the hysterical, flighty sort. Reads detective stories, too."

That might mean anything, though the Superintendent's voice implied approval. 

"I gather they thought the mistress was having one of her bad headaches; she gets them once a month or so and woe betide them if they disturb her until the worst is over. But the postman came with a registered letter and wouldn't take anyone else's signature. So Agnes tiptoed up to wake her, but when she put her hand on her shoulder she was already cold. At which point, she sent the boot boy for the village bobby and insisted that nothing should be moved or touched until he'd been. The postman kicked up a bit of a fuss about not being allowed to take the postbag, but Agnes was firm."

Dermot let out a low whistle. "Wasted in domestic service, that one."

"Quite. Well, the bobby gets to the house at about the same time as the doctor -- not her usual man, he's ill, but the duty chap at the cottage hospital. Their first thought is an overdose of sleeping stuff; either accident or suicide."

Once again, the Superintendent glanced around the well-proportioned room. Dermot could read his thoughts as if he had spoken them aloud. He had, to be fair, thought them himself a time or so. _Why would anyone in possession of all this want to do themselves in? Why DO they do themselves in?_

"So they looked for a note?" he prompted.

"That's about the size of it. And of course, when they opened the post-bag and saw a letter addressed to a top-drawer Harley Street man --" The Superintendent spread his hands in a gesture of finality.

Dermot nodded, again. The bobby and the duty doctor would have already been writing their reports.

_Recent bad news-- no, no doubt at all, the best man available -- no hope -- badly advanced -- expecting frightful pain --'balance of the mind disturbed' -- no, put it down as an accidental overdose -- no bother with the Coroner -- no need to upset the family further._

Until they'd read the letter itself.

Dermot's tongue flicked out to moisten dry lips. "Well. It's unexpected. Not the sort of thing you expect to find in rural Gloucestershire, is it?"

The Superintendent vented his feelings in a long and expressive sigh. "Thank God, no. We've got our fair share of queer customers, but this kind of highbrow Freudian stuff is a different matter altogether. My first thought was the deceased might have been a bit off her head herself, but we haven't heard a breath of that from the staff. If anything she seems to have been almost too much on the ball."

Dermot decoded that as "damp finger over every surface for dust and a sharp eye out for flirtations with the tradesmen." Good. Disgruntled servants were pure gold in any investigation.

"I can see why you might have had your doubts, sir. When a woman writes to one of the leading consulting psychiatrists in the country, claiming her son's developed an _idée fixe_ that a middle-aged local lady doctor is the living embodiment of the Corn Goddess and he's been destined all his life to be her sacrificial bridegroom, anyone might wonder."

He steepled his hands in a gesture he recalled, a split second too late, he had copied from Uncle Henry.

"But, how on earth could she possibly know that, sir? I can't imagine it's the sort of thing a man tells his mother."

"Read his diary, most like," the Superintendent said. "Oh, I've not found it, but you've only got to meet young Fleming to know he's just the sort to have poured out his soul for the benefit of posterity, and not had the wit to keep it locked sensibly away in the here-and-now. And he doesn't deny the goddess business, either; just says it's too sacred and precious to contaminate by talking about it."

Dermot thought he was beginning to see what the Superintendent meant by "*Difficult -- but not in the usual way.*" He tapped the letter. "It says here, sir, the boy had a bad head injury last year. Fell off his horse and nearly died. The head injury does make the _idée fixe_ notion a bit more plausible. You can never tell how concussion cases are going to turn out."

The Superintendent gave a snort of disgust. "Mostly, though, they have the decency to get fixated on the nurses, and the Matron's got her eye open for that. There's not a lot she can do if it's the doctor they go for instead. Though, call me old-fashioned, I'd have thought a doctor would have fought shy of getting themselves involved with a patient."

"Do we know anything about this Hilary Mansell, sir?"

"I've spoken to the Matron at the cottage hospital. According to the Matron, she's competent enough, so far as her work goes. A bit of a trial, though. Arrogant, not very accommodating, and inclined to pull rank."

"Doesn't sound like a very nice lady at all, sir." Craddock gave the Superintendent his expected straight line. "The Matron said, _as far as her work goes_. And her private life?"

The Superintendent's disgusted expression deepened. "A story there, though the Matron wasn't able to give me much by way of detail. Some of the nurses were more forthcoming, though. Seems this Dr Mansell had ambitions to go into surgery; she was in the running for a permanent position at the hospital where she trained, the Clyde Summers."

Dermot raised his eyebrows. From the Superintendent's tone, he had no inkling the hospital in question had a European-wide reputation for neurosurgery. For a woman to be kept on at all, even as a house-surgeon, she must have shown exceptional talent. A mind to be respected, then.

"So what happened?"

"What would you expect? An affair with one of the other junior doctors -- not the most discreet of businesses, it seems. Scuppered her chances for the post when the news got round. Well, you can see the consultant's point. No-one wants to appoint some woman who'll marry and leave to have babies -- or, worse, start producing babies without the benefit of clergy. But of course, _she_ didn't see it that way. Flounced off in a huff, came here, and started lodging with a Mrs Clare, who's got a pretty spotty reputation on her own account. Separated from her husband but she can't have been lily-white herself; filed for her decree nisi but the decree absolute never came through."

"Oh, dear," Dermot said. "Bit of a familiar pattern, isn't it?" 

The Superintendent nodded.

"Quite so. And haven't you noticed, these middle-aged vampire types never seem to be the obviously glamorous sort? I suppose men -- at least, if they've got any sense -- are more on the alert for *those*. This one's practically plain. Ten years older than the boy, if she's a day, and looking twice that. But she saw her chance and got her claws into him good and proper."

"So how did that happen, sir?"

"Convinced the boy she'd saved his life. Happened to be the doctor on duty when he was brought into the cottage hospital. Managed to make sure she _stayed_ on duty, too. I've spoken to the Matron about that. Put off having a consultation with the boy's own doctor, despite his mother begging her to arrange it on several occasions. Wouldn't let the mother in to see him."

 _That_ , for the first time, struck an off note. Dermot frowned. Even if a designing woman expected to clash with her victim's mother in due course, surely picking a quarrel so early in proceedings was foolhardy? 

"And saving his life?"

The Superintendent shrugged. "True enough, as far as it goes. Dr Mansell spotted his condition was deteriorating and made a telephone call to her old hospital. They rushed him in for emergency surgery. I daresay any competent doctor on the spot would have done the same."

Dermot looked down at the letter again. "Dr Mansell's behaviour seems odd on a number of counts, though, sir. According to Mrs Fleming, she got the boy worked up into proposing, but when he did she then turned round and told the boy she wouldn't consider his offer unless he chucked up his duties to the estate and went on the stage. That doesn't make sense. Not if she was after his money."

Even as he said the words, he felt their inanity. The heir to Larch Hill, like the heir to Pemberley, would have long since grown sick of girls who pursued him for the sake of his acreage. Asking him to renounce his worldly wealth as a proof of love was a masterstroke: the touch not merely of a clever woman, but of a genius. She could always stage a pretty sacrifice of her own pride to his, once the engagement ring was on her finger.

The Superintendent looked pityingly at him.

"Let's not jump to conclusions this early, shall we? Craddock, here's what I want you to do. I've impounded every poison in the house, from the cleaning closet to the garden-shed, and I'm having the lot inventoried, for when the tests come back from the lab. However, there's a young pharmacy upstairs in the deceased's bathroom cupboard. Can you note down all of it, and look out for anything which looks off?"

"Off, sir?"

"Well, I don't want to prejudice you. But I'd be interested to see anything there that's come by an unusual route. Or which has restricted access. Or things that shouldn't be taken in combination with other things, let's say."

Dermot chose his next words very carefully. "You mean, you want me to look out for something only someone with medical knowledge would think to use as a poison?"

"Let aside what I want, Craddock. Just use your brains, eh? But when there's a great big motive staring you right in the face, it'd be foolish not to start considering what means and opportunity the person with that motive might have, wouldn't it?"

The Superintendent had not exaggerated about the contents of the medicine cabinet. Dr Lowe must be a practitioner of the old school, who refused to allow a patient to leave his surgery without prescribing some mixture to be taken three times a day after meals. Also, Dermot thought resentfully, as his hand started to cramp from noting particulars and dosages, Mrs Fleming seemed to have been Gloucestershire's most practised hypochondriac.

The cabinet bulged with tinctures, lotions, mixtures, cachets and pills. He even found a green morocco-leather case which, when opened, revealed a hypodermic syringe resting in a slot in its lilac satin interior. There was a second, empty slot, where another syringe should have fitted. Broken, mislaid, away for sterilisation? Or was there something more sinister to explain its absence?

And what, by all the saints, could Mrs Fleming have had need of a hypodermic for, let alone two?

He looked through the medicine collection once more. 

Amid the packets he had put aside for further consideration was a white cardboard box whose label bore the words, "One to be injected when the pain is very severe. No more than one injection in any 24 hour period." Below the instructions was a spidery signature, illegible and hasty. 

The box's seal was broken. When Dermot flipped up the box lid, he found two neat rows of glass vials, each containing a measured dose. At the end of the front row a gap like a missing tooth showed where a vial had been removed.

Dermot carried the box to the window. After a moment's thought he went back to the jumble on the dressing table and started to sort them into heaps, methodically and according to one sole criterion.

They would call a handwriting analyst, of course. "I"s had to be dotted and "T"s crossed. But, as he worked on in the dust-hung, scented quiet of the murdered woman's boudoir, a cold, creeping certainty grew in Dermot's heart.

The florid, broad-nibbed signature of Dr Lowe appeared on a quarter of the medicine labels. The rest were written in neat, nondescript pharmacists' hands, from chemist shops all round the county. A rotten job for the uniformed branch to match up to prescriptions, especially since Dermot had a strong suspicion that such work would yield nothing but the elimination of lines of defence.

For the box of vials, alone of all the medicines in the room, bore the damning hieroglyph "H.C.Mansell."


	3. Chapter 3

Sam had heard of stomachs turning over. He'd thought it a figure of speech. But that was before he had heard Lisa Clare's voice on the other end of the line. Mrs Clare was upset but lucid, even though what she had to tell him was so fantastic that for one split second he wondered if he were the victim of a practical joke in the worst of all conceivable taste.

As he put the handset back on the bracket he was shaking. Not just his hands, but all over.

James looked up at him. "What the Hell -- ?"

He collapsed onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. 

"Hilary," he said, in a muffled sort of way. "They've arrested _Hilary_. For murder."

All the way out to Gloucestershire, his head resting against the dusty cushions of the train seat, he visualised his aunt handcuffed by police officers, pinioned between wardresses, dragged away into the women's wing of the county gaol. And, because his imagination was vivid and four and a half years as an articled clerk had done much to dent his original faith in human common-sense, he followed her further. He saw her in the dock, futilely protesting her innocence before a jury of country dullards, their innate prejudices against women who moved out of their proper sphere craftily stoked by Counsel for the Crown. He saw the judge reach for the black cap. He saw the hooded executioner, striding through the prison corridors in the cold dawn light, testing the trap for the long drop. And he saw the announcement being nailed to the prison gates and the prison standard being hoisted to confirm all was over.

At Cheltenham station the fog of horror in which he had travelled lifted, just for a moment. He knocked on the stationmaster's office door, explained in a few crisp phrases that he had urgent business and -- completely against his better judgment, indeed, with very little idea why the idea had seized him with such force -- sent a telegram to Raymond West.

\----

JR Fleming's Apollonian looks were undimmed even by stress and (doubtless) insomnia. The violet circles beneath his eyes added an air of bewitching pathos, like that of a wounded faun. 

"Fleming, what on earth's been going on?" 

Sam's voice, which he'd intended to sound no more than forceful, came out accusatory. Fleming looked first startled and then resentful.

"Don't _bellow_ like that. My head's absolutely splitting."

"You can take an aspirin and lie down later. Let's think of Hilary, first, all right?"

" _Think_ about Hilary? My God, have you _no_ imagination? I haven't stopped thinking about her -- locked in that horrible, squalid place. And they won't even let me visit her!"

"That's because you'll be a witness at the trial, I expect." 

Not, alas, a defendant, though the lack of logic in the police case stuck out like a sore thumb. At least, it did to Sam's (admittedly prejudiced) viewpoint. Any evidence of motive against Hilary surely went for double against Fleming. Opportunity, likewise. 

Years ago, an eminent criminal silk had come up to Oxford to address a student law society, and stayed an extra couple of days to take advantage of the college facilities. Under conditions better suited for unreserve than the podium of the lecture theatre, he'd waxed cynical and expansive about country police forces.

"Forget justice. They have to live with these people, afterwards. And rural districts have long memories. A policeman who upsets a big local family doesn't just risk his own career. Suppose his mother takes in laundry -- his wife's a dressmaker -- his brother has a bicycle repair shop. All their businesses start feeling the chill. Just a word here and there over the vicarage coffee cups does the trick. You can hardly blame local police if they prefer to pin crimes onto a handy outsider. One to remember, if you get a case with a County connection."

Fleming's aggrieved cough brought Sam back to the present. Even without the K.C's warning, there was no point in alienating the man, not until he had to.

"Look here, Fleming, I know it's rotten for you. I can take a message if you like. Since I'm related, I expect I can get leave to visit through Hilary's solicitors. Who's handling her defence? I must speak to them at once."

Fleming looked sulky. "I don't know. I wanted her to use our family firm -- Blair Hayward and Bennett, they've acted for us practically since the Conquest -- but she said no. I can't imagine why. It can't have been the expense; I offered to pay everything, naturally, and I only got some garbled message back from that awful landlady of hers -- Lisa Clare -- she seems to have wormed her way in everywhere. Some nonsense about its looking bad, or causing problems with the Law Society or something to use our family solicitors."

Sam had absolutely no intention of explaining the 'cutthroat defence' to Fleming. But if anyone was going to take that line, it wouldn't be a firm of solicitors whom countless generations of Flemings had fed, clothed and kept comfortably housed. His opinion of Lisa Clare, whom he had yet to meet, went up another notch.

"Well, I'll find out. Anyway, Fleming, you haven't answered my question. Do you know what can possibly have happened? Could your mother have taken something --" He saw Fleming's mouth begin to shape a denial, and raised hs hand to forestall the inevitable. "No. Not like that. But could she have combined two medicines which reacted badly with each other? By accident, I mean."

Sam had seen Fleming's Caliban. And, for that matter, his Oberon. He thought distantly that should have prepared him. As he explained later, to James, "I knew he could become a different person. I just hadn't expected to happen _then_. Or like _that_."

" _Oh_." An intense exhalation of agonised revelation, followed by a perfectly judged pause. "I see now. Oh, God, what a fool I've been. I can't -- d'you realise, a man at Oxford warned me once about _eau de noyau_ \-- they make it from peach stones, you know, that's why it's got that bitter almond taste. Mother loved it; it was the only liqueur she could bear to drink. I kept a bottle in my set at Oxford, for when she came to visit." 

Fleming rose from the sofa, where he had been slumped, and paced across to the window. The late afternoon sun caught his features at the perfect angle, making him look simultaneously ethereal, noble and tormented.

"It was Halliwell who warned me _noyau_ could be dangerous. Did you know him? Frightfully earnest. Chemist. Keble. Kept wanting OUDS to put on JB Priestley and Githa Sowerby. If only I'd remembered last week -- but Halliwell was such a dim bulb, one never *did* remember anything he said, ten seconds later. Oh, God, I'm babbling, aren't I? But if only -- How could I forget? How dare I forget? This is all my fault."

Sam repressed the urge to slap him. A genuine lead would be worth rubies, but this _Detective Weekly_ stuff about _noyau_ smelt of desperation: a drowning man clutching at straws. Because Sam was straw-clutching on his own account, his voice came out all the harsher.

"What's your fault? Pull yourself together, man; you're not making sense."

"I suppose I'm not." A bitter, half-smile played about Fleming's lips. "It comes as a shock to a man, to realise he's killed his own mother. Look, Mansell, do you mind seeing yourself out? I've got rather an important call to put through to the police."

Sam might never have attempted anything more elevated in the acting line than "Sheep, noises off" at his prep. school, but he knew a curtain line when he heard one. He exited, stage left.


	4. Chapter 4

After the histrionics of Larch Hill, Lisa Clare's home struck Sam with profound relief. " _The sober certainty of waking bliss_ ", he thought, finding a proper use for that quotation at last.

When the maid showed him in there were three people sitting around the dining room table, over the remains of a cold-beef-and-salad lunch: Lisa Clare herself; a colourless man who reminded Sam of newspaper photographs of Trotsky, minus the goatee; and a short, energetic-looking man in his early thirties. 

"My husband, Rupert," Lisa said, indicating beardless Trotsky. Sam muttered something incoherent. In the capitals of Europe Rupert Clare's name was rumoured to give certain politicians sleepless nights. He had expected the man himself to be more prepossessing.

Fortunately, Lisa Clare didn't seem to notice anything amiss. She waved her hand towards the third person.

"And this is Ben Carley, Hilary's solicitor."

"Oh, thank _God_ ," Sam said with feeling. There was absolutely nothing of the hayseed about Carley; his sharp, pin-striped suit said as much. If he had not just left the overbearing, exquisite taste of Larch Hill Sam might have been tempted to call the suit "flashy". Now it looked reassuringly citified.

Carley grinned. "Nothing like flattery to bring the best out of your legal team. Something you'll soon find out for yourself, if you haven't already. Mrs Clare tells me you're an articled clerk. Herbert Smith, isn't it?"

"For my sins," Sam said.

Carley rolled his eyes heavenwards. "They must have been good ones."

They exchanged a quick grin of professional camaraderie. 

"Anyway, that should make it a great deal easier to get you a pass in to see Dr Mansell. Tomorrow, not this afternoon, I'm afraid. The mills of Gloucester Prison grind slow. So, in the meantime, have you got any suggestions for me? You've just come from Larch Hill?"

Sam opened his mouth, but before he could say anything the doorbell rang. Lisa looked up in surprise.

"Oh, I do _hope_ it's not the man from the local paper again."

"Probably just another of Hilary's patients exercising morbid curiosity under the guise of wanting to be helpful," Clare said.

The maid opened the dining room door and, after a doubtful glance across at her mistress, looked at Sam.

"It's the lady you telegraphed about, sir. She's here, and she really thinks she ought to see you at once, sir."

"Lady?" Lisa's brows had drawn together in puzzlement.

"I don't -- " Sam flapped his hand, seeking enlightenment. Then it came. "That is -- you can't possibly mean Miss Marple?"

"That was the name she gave, sir. Should I take her through to the front parlour, ma'am?"

Lisa looked at the wreckage of lunch on the table, and nodded.

"Yes, of course. Tell her Mr Mansell will be with her as soon as he can. Can you rustle us up a pot of tea, please?" 

The dining room door had barely closed behind the maid when Ben Carley let out an impressed whistle. "You dark horse, Mansell. How on earth did you bring that one off?"

"I'm sorry." Rupert Clare didn't sound so, in the least. "Who on earth is this woman and why's she here?"

Carley grinned. " _Why_ she's here I'll leave to Mansell. But who she is -- the best amateur sleuth alive, pretty much. Remember the Warminster poisoner?"

"I think I may have been abroad. Also, I don't tend to keep up with police court news. Some of the other chaps cover that for the paper."

"Pity. It was a good case. Lovely performance by defence counsel, and he was up against the best, too. Neil Francis appeared for the Crown, and you'd have to go a very long way to spot any flies on him. Nonetheless, he was struggling from the start. You could almost see the defendant planning what he was going to do with his aunt's legacy, when he stepped from the dock a free man at the end of the week." 

Sam's nails bit into his palms. "And then?"

"On the close of the second day, just as I was leaving court, I spotted a little old lady talking with Francis. And Francis looked as if he could see the gates of heaven opening. Next morning I made some excuse to the senior partner and was back in court, bright and early. And so was the little old lady."

Carley took a deep breath.

"Well, Francis changed his strategy. He had the defendant recalled to the witness box for re-examination, and went to town on the medical stuff. They'd gone into all that on the previous day, and the defendant had managed to put up a pretty good show of total ignorance of poisons. 'Ah,' says Francis, when they're half way through the same charade and the judge is getting restive, 'but surely when you were working as a pharmacist's assistant in Plymouth --'. That's when I knew the Crown had him. His head went back and he stared up at the public gallery, looking for someone.And he spotted her -- the little old lady, sitting quietly knitting. As soon as he did, all the fight went out of him. I doubt the jury were out an hour, in the end."

"And that was Miss Marple?"

"It was indeed. May I join you?"

Miss Marple was exactly as he remembered her from Bertram's Hotel, if a little pinker about the cheeks. She burst straight into speech as soon as they entered, without waiting for introductions.

"Mr Mansell, do forgive me if I'm seeming to impose, but really, when I got your telegram I realised there was not a moment to lose. I'm staying at the vicarage -- the dear vicar was a curate at St Mary Mead when we had that very unfortunate business with the Archdeacon's cufflinks, and he _most_ kindly offered to put me up while I was in the district -- which reminds me. Sally -- his wife -- is having one of her coffee mornings tomorrow and she very much hoped she might see Mrs Clare."

Sam gulped. "I'm not sure vicarage coffee mornings are quite Mrs Clare's sort of thing --"

Miss Marple regarded him severely over the top of her glasses. "That, Mr Mansell, is entirely besides the point. Murder, you know, changes everything. Keeping aloof simply doesn't do in these circumstances; it encourages speculation to run riot. It will do Dr Mansell a great deal of good, and, I might add, it will also starve the gossip-mongers of material. Can you imagine the sort of treatment your aunt's reputation will get over the coffee cups if someone from her side is _not_ present?"

Sam muttered something about "seeing what he could do." Whether or not that satisfied her, it at least moved her to change the subject.

"I understand you've just come from Larch Hill, Mr Mansell."

He blinked, but cautiously admitted that was so.

"And how did you find Mr Fleming?" 

Sam gave a succinct, unvarnished account of his meeting, including Fleming's theory that somehow his mother had contrived to poison herself with *eau de noyau*.

"Oh. I see. _Eau de noyau_ \-- a liqueur of which she was particularly fond. How interesting!"

Carley, who had been growing visibly restive throughout his account, slammed his empty cup down into his saucer. "Interesting? It's a complete taradiddle from beginning to end!"

Miss Marple turned her full attention to the little lawyer. "Quite so, Mr Carley. That's the most interesting thing about it. I'm sure you must have found, in your legal practice that while, I'm sorry to say, people tell all sorts of lies for a wide variety of reasons, examining the _kind_ of lies they tell produces some fruitful leads. Here, for instance, we have Mr Fleming claiming to have been responsible for his mother's death, albeit in a clearly impossible manner. As I said, very interesting indeed."

She paused, as if awaiting a response, but both Sam and -- he was relieved to see -- Carley had had the wind knocked out of their sails. After a moment Sam gestured for her to continue.

"Of course, _eau de noyau_ does indeed contain a tiny proportion of cyanide -- that's what lends it flavour -- and over the years one or two very unfortunate accidents have arisen as a result. Due, in the most part, to _adulteration_ by tradespeople or over-indulgence on the part of the victims. But of course, Elaine Fleming could never have died in such a way. To begin with, that sort of person always buys wines and spirits from some very respectable firm with whom her family has dealt for generations. Then again, she sounds not at all the type to over-indulge. And, given she was fond of _eau de noyau_ and had drunk it on many previous occasions, it could not be a case of a particular idiosyncrasy. In any event, cyanide is a very fast-acting poison. Any reaction to _noyau_ would have made itself apparent in the drawing room, and that very intelligent young maid would have noticed something, and said so."

Miss Marple drew a deep breath. 

"No; I'm sorry to say that the _noyau_ idea is really very silly. Quite over-dramatic. Mr Fleming may _possibly_ believe it to be true, but the results of the Home Office analysis are bound to prove him false. And, Mr Carley, I very much advise you to be prepared for whatever that analysis may reveal, and to prepare your client."


	5. Chapter 5

"Hyoscine? Injected or ingested?" Hilary looked across the table at her lawyer. 

Ben Carley tapped his sheaf of papers. She recognised, even upside down, the UCH letterhead, and the knot in her stomach tightened.

"Probably the latter, but Spilsbury's hedging his bets. Possibly because there's one hypodermic present which checks out clean and another absent without leave, which could have contained anything. No unexplained puncture marks, that anyone's been able to find."

She thought she could, by now, begin to decode her solicitor's hints, even if Ben Carley was too downy a bird to do anything which could be regarded as leading a witness.

"He's taken a view? I thought the Home Office pathologist was supposed to be objective?" Her voice came out thin and a little shrill, but steady, thank God.

Carley cleared his throat. It had a peculiarly ironic ring to it. " _Supposed_ being the operative word, Dr Mansell. He takes an objective and evidence-based view of the infallibility of his own first impressions. I'm sure you've come across the type. And since you are known to have prescribed the lady an injection recently --" His dark eyes glanced round the prison interview room, making the point without need for further words.

Hilary bit her lip, recalling the surgery; that tense, unexpected, end-of-hours encounter with Elaine Fleming.

"Dr Lowe's been ill. We've all been covering his patients." She hesitated. "To be honest, I hadn't expected Mrs Fleming to come to me, even if it were only for a repeat prescription. Neuralgia. Also, I don't usually prescribe injections -- most patients are bad at them, and you don't want an intramuscular jab turning into an intravenous one accidentally. But it *is* the most effective way of dealing with acute pain. And, as I said, Dr Lowe wrote the original prescription."

"And no professional wants to be put in the position of questioning another professional's judgement in so many words. _Especially_ not if they suspect the client -- sorry, patient -- is egging them on to do just that." Carley's boot-button eyes were shrewd and, unexpectedly, kind; she blessed Lisa again for finding him.

"You sound as if you knew Mrs Fleming." Her voice came from somewhere remote, hardly under her control at all. Tears pricked behind her eyes. 

"Here." Carley reached inside his jacket, produced a cigarette case, lit one for her and passed it across the table. At her reaction, he grinned. "Rank hath its privileges. As does remand." 

He lit another cigarette for himself, and leaned back as far as the uncompromising prison chair permitted, crossing his pin-striped legs at the ankles. "I can't say I *knew* Elaine Fleming. But I've met her kind before. Why do you think she came to consult you, beyond hoping you might say something uncharitable about Dr Lowe which she could share with the church flower committee?"

Hilary took a long drag on her cigarette. The smoke's harsh familiarity calmed her nerves, allowing her to think straight for the first time in an age.

"I think she wanted to take a close look at me when all the constraints were on me, not her. No matter what she said, I could hardly throw a patient out."

"Yes, I see." Carley, mercifully, chose not to press enquiries as to what had passed between them. That memory was too raw to go near. "So you made up the prescription yourself?"

"Yes. It was right at the end of the day, and I didn't want her going round saying I'd made her drive miles round to the duty chemist. All made up exactly as Dr Lowe would have done it. Not a trace of hyoscine. It's all in the book. The police have seen it."

"So they have. But they've also seen that over two grains of hyoscine hydrobromide is missing from the surgery dispensary, unaccounted for. That would be what? About four times the normal lethal dose?"

"Easily." Hilary shivered. "Closer to eight."

"And was there any moment during the time Mrs Fleming was in the surgery when she might have abstracted it?"

" _Mrs_ Fleming? Certainly not!"

Involuntarily, below the level of the table, Hilary's hand clenched in a fist. She had not intended to put the emphasis there. Odd, how the sub-conscious mind knew things long before one's consciousness dared entertain them. Perhaps she ought to have paid more attention to Freud while she'd had the chance.

Carley, fortunately, seemed not to have noticed. 

"If you could manage to be slightly less definite when Counsel for the Prosecution ask you the same question, your defence team will be exceedingly grateful."

The creeping cold inside her deepened -- when the poison reached her heart, she would be gone -- but only crystallised her thoughts.

"That cock won't fight. You'll never get a jury to believe Elaine Fleming stole two bob's worth of hyoscine from a doctor's surgery. Her son's fiancée's surgery, to boot. Half the tradesmen in the neighbourhood will queue to tell the court she made a five mile detour to pay them a ha'penny under-charge. Murder -- yes, there are some murders a jury might believe of her. Petty theft? Never."

Carley exhaled a long, slow curl of smoke. "Dear God! What a woman." 

Impossible to tell if distaste or amusement were uppermost in his expression. 

"Anyway," Hilary said doggedly, " _If_ I'm supposed to have slipped the woman the hyoscine, how am I supposed to have done it? She wouldn't even let me give her the injection she'd come for: 'No, Dr Mansell, don't trouble yourself. I shall do it at home. I was a VAD in the Great War, I know perfectly well what to do.'" 

The mimicry came out more accurate and more cruel than she had intended. She gripped, hard, on the edge of the table, to retain her balance.

Carley scribbled a quick note on his pad. Impossible to decipher; his handwriting was almost as crabbed as a doctor's. 

"I take it those vials are standard -- size, shape and manufacturer?"

She nodded. "The practices round here have a buying club, to keep costs of medical supplies down. I could have sneaked a vial of hyoscine into the box and waited for Mrs Fleming to inject herself, yes. But it's a ludicrous idea. I doubt she uses more than one or two vials a month at the outside. You can't plan a murder which might happen any time in the next six months."

Their existing cigarettes were barely half-smoked but Carley pulled out his cigarette case again and flipped open the hinged lid. 

"Think of this as the box. Each cigarette is a vial."

"Double layer, not single." She could recall the care with which she had packed them, as if she would be judged wanting if they strayed a few thousandths of an inch from the true.

"Doesn't matter. No-one's going to take one from the lower layer before the top one's used up. Now. Assume a right-handed person's holding a hypodermic -- sterilised, so can't put it down. Assume they've had medical training. How do they take a vial from the box?"

Hilary mimed the sequence, keeping her eyes on Carley's face, relying on pure muscle memory. "Right hand vial, top layer. Every time."

"Quite. So, if that's the line they're going down, then yes; you could, with reasonable accuracy, have known which vial Mrs Fleming would use first. But what you couldn't have done is got rid of the evidence afterwards. That is, not without help. Though, I'm afraid, that's inconclusive. They found a bottle of distilled water in the room; it seems Mrs Fleming made a point of flushing through the syringe after each use."

"VAD training. She would." Even injected, a lethal dose of hyoscine would take time to act. There might just have been time enough. Absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. It was the sort of thing forensic experts argued about for days in the witness box.

She bit her lip, her eyes unfocussed. After an endless second, Carley got to his feet.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

At the door he turned round.

"Give a bit of thought to how that hyoscine could have left your surgery. Don't let sentiment obstruct your imagination. Don't forget; it's your neck at stake -- no-one else's."


	6. Chapter 6

The words on the page swam before Dermot's eyes, refusing to arrange themselves in sentences. If only he could finish this final report and be out of here, and not have to see this damnable place until the Assizes, if then. 

"Excuse me, but would you mind if I join you?"

A fluffy, elderly lady wearing a pink cardigan was standing beside his table. The teashop, at this time in the morning, was crammed with elevenses-seekers. The seat opposite him appeared to be the only unoccupied one in the whole place.

He had come here by way of escape. Talking to anyone was the last thing he wanted to do. Yet manners demanded he offer her the seat. And she, unlike everyone at the station, wouldn't insist on talking about that damned case -- and not merely talking, damn them all, positively _rejoicing_ about the outcome. With this old tabby, his nerves would be safe from further jolts.

"Please, be my guest."

She settled herself with a great deal of commotion and apology, eyed the menu and, after some discussion, sent the waitress for scones ("plain butter, please, no jam") and a pot of tea ("Indian, quite strong, and a _thoroughly_ warned pot"). That task accomplished, she looked brightly across the table at him.

"Forgive my asking, but you _are_ Sir Henry Clithering's nephew, aren't you?"

He concealed his shock. "I -- ah, well, yes. But I --"

Dermot's mind flicked back to yesterday's half-finished, unfinishable letter to his uncle, consigned to the fire when he'd realised that the words he really wanted to use were unwritable:

_What should a conscientious policeman do when his superior officer wraps up a case on a capital charge and you're convinced he's sent the wrong person for trial?_

The old lady nodded. "I thought so. A _very_ strong likeness! Sir Henry lives quite close to St Mary Mead, my own village. Such a distinguished man, and so truly clever. Very kind, too. Most generous with his time."

He cautiously conceded that Uncle Henry was all of the above. 

"But I'm running ahead of myself. My name is Jane Marple. I'm staying at the Vicarage here. And you, of course, must be Detective-Constable Dermot Craddock. Your uncle mentioned how pleased he was that you'd decided to follow in his footsteps."

The waitress arrived, bearing a loaded tray. The business of pouring out tea and buttering her scone was not enough to keep Miss Marple quiet. 

"Yes, you really do resemble him very strongly. I should imagine you two think very much alike. I do wish I could have known your uncle as a young man. He has the most fascinating stories from his early days -- though many of them quite sad too, of course, in their own way."

"Sad" was the last word Dermot would have applied to Uncle Henry.

"I'm sorry?" he hazarded.

"Well, detectives like yourselves do have such a difficult job, don't you? There was one story he told me -- now I come to think of it, I don't suppose he could have been much older than you were now, and it was back -- oh, a few years before the War, and the War changed so much -- less so in country places like this, but nevertheless a great deal. For instance, I believe your uncle would have been one of the first public-school educated men to be on the Force. No doubt that caused all sorts of friction and awkwardness with his colleagues at the time, dear me, yes."

Dermot blinked. Accustomed to Sir Henry's glittering reputation being an albatross round his own neck, he had simply not wondered what it might have been like for his uncle, striking out across pathless territory.

Miss Marple nodded her head, as though satisfied he was following her.

"I didn't like to pry too much, since it was clear this particular case was a painful memory for your uncle, but from what I could glean it involved the murder of a little girl. A *most* distasteful business."

Distasteful! Dermot had worked on a couple of such cases when in uniform, and the Victorian euphemism made him want to laugh out loud. That, or punch something. Then he caught the cool, steady gaze behind the tortoiseshell spectables, and his rattled nerves steadied. Victorian language or no, impossible as it seemed, this white-haired, fragile old lady had experienced the depths of human evil, looked it in the face and known it for what it was.

"Well, in this particular case the little girl vanished on her way home from Sunday school. I don't think she was missed until it started growing dark -- it was summer, and everyone assumed she'd gone off playing with her friends. And it was only several days later that they found the body. It was in a quarry, half the breadth of the county away."

Miss Marple buttered another scone. "Of course that seemed suggestive. The police search turned to carters, people with pantechnicons, railway freight depots and so forth. And -- as so very often happens, particularly in a country place -- public opinion lighted upon a man who had always been an object of general suspicion. Reuben Jenkins was a carter in the district, a rather simple, solitary man with a tendency to violent outbursts, particularly when in drink. People said he had beaten a dog to death."

"But something like that -- done in public, in anger -- is hardly the same kind of thing as the surreptitious abduction of a child," Dermot protested.

Miss Marple beamed at him. "Exactly so! People fall into _types_ ; in their bad deeds as well as their good ones. This must have required a great deal of planning and forethought. Quite the wrong crime for Reuben Jenkins! Besides, he was the sort of man all the children in the district were warned to keep away from. Little Emily-Jane would never have gone anywhere alone with him. And there was another thing. One of Emily-Jane's friends at school, a little boy called Tommy, said all the older children at the village school had a sort of competition which of them would be the first to ride in a motor-car. Of course, they were very rare indeed in those days. What's more, the very morning Emily-Jane disappeared, she'd told him she expected to win it."

"A motor-car!"

"Quite so. The thought struck your uncle at once. However, he met the strongest of opposition from his superiors. Not only were motor-cars rare, they were the prerogative of the wealthy and well-connected. And this was such a particularly *sordid* crime. Still, Sir Henry stuck to his guns -- I believe he argued that the crime might have been committed by some _chauffeur_ purloining his master's car, and so all the cars in the district had to be ruled out."

 _Softly, softly, catchee monkey_ had always been Uncle Henry's motto. It occurred to Dermot he could do worse than adopt it as his own.

"After what was no doubt a _large_ amount of painstaking work and, I daresay, some needless hostility from those who ought to have been more public-spirited, he happened upon a _most_ promising line of enquiry. In a village about ten miles away from where the little girl had vanished there was a lovely Jacobean manor, owned by a couple in their sixties."

"With a motor car?"

"Indeed. _And_ a chauffeur -- a free-spending, rather flashy young man. The locals' name for him was 'London'."

Dermot winced. Miss Marple nodded.

"A telling insult, in a country place. Small wonder Sir Henry thought himself on the verge of a breakthough, especially when he found some odd scratches and damage to the car's bodywork that the chauffeur couldn't explain and seemed evasive about when asked."

"But --" Miss Marple had described the story as a sad one. Apart from the intrinsic horror of a young life cut short, there would be nothing particularly sad in Uncle Henry's arresting a flashy, unlikeable chauffeur. Dermot chose his next words carefully. "Had he an alibi?"

"Indeed he had. He'd been given leave to go to the funeral of a relative. An aunt, I believe, or perhaps a grandmother." Miss Marple sniffed. "No such thing, of course. He'd been at a race-meeting; your uncle soon got to the bottom of that. Still, it didn't help -- an alibi is an alibi. Stronger, really, for the surface deception. Being caught out in the lie about the funeral would explain anything shifty about the chauffeur's demeanour at once. At least, to the *general* run of people."

There was something in her tone --

"Could he have let anyone else drive the car?"

Her beam suggested she saw Dermot as a slightly dense gun-dog who had finally grasped the command, "Fetch!"

"Indeed yes. It turned out the couple had a son -- one of those 'late blessing' children. What's more, he'd been down from school -- he was in the Sixth -- on a half-term visit to his parents that weekend."

Dermot had a queasy sense he was about to discover that, in this case, the blessing was a very mixed one.

"After, I gather, the most tremendous argument, your uncle got leave to interview the boy. And the boy confided -- indeed, Sir Henry said it was more of a boast -- that yes, he had bribed the chauffeur into teaching him to drive, behind his parents' back. He was, though, adamant that he'd not seen or heard anything of Emily-Jane, the day she disappeared. Not even when the search got up. He _claimed_ he'd been off ferretting all afternoon."

"I see."

"Yes, Mr Craddock, I rather think you do. For your uncle, the most telling evidence was the boy's manner. It was, Sir Henry told me, as like watching someone trying on clothes, to see which outfit fitted the occasion best. One moment haughty and dismissive, the next moment disarming and vulnerable. I'm sure you've come across the kind of thing yourself."

Dermot recalled, abruptly, that last impossible interview with Julian Fleming. The tea on his tongue had the bitter, stewed taste of defeat. He looked up, over the rim of the cup, to meet Miss Marple's steady, knowing gaze. 

"What happened?" His voice seemed to come from very far away.

"Well, nothing, I'm sorry to say. That is, your uncle had no success at all in persuading his superiors that they ought to confront the boy with the scratches on the car paint and see what that got out of him. And then, of course, a few days later Reuben Jenkins was found drowned in the river --"

"What!?"

"Yes; it did seem a little *too* convenient but he was under a _great_ deal of strain, and he was on his way home from the _Black Lion_ , along a very treacherous bit of bank. In any event, I think there was a general feeling that however he got in the river, he deserved to be there. But that, of course, brought an end to the investigation. The village was satisfied that little Emily-Jane's killer had been found, and, if he'd cheated the hangman, at least he'd not survived to gloat about it. And in that sort of case, of course, no-one would thank your uncle for stirring matters up. The case was closed."

"That can't have been the end of it." Dermot had never been more certain of anything in his life.

"Oh, no. About five or six years later, when your uncle had moved on to another station, there was another case. A small girl vanished after Sunday school on a summer's day -- no-one looking for her until dusk. Your uncle recognised the pattern at once. While it was twenty miles or more from Emily-Jane's village, it was no more than _five_ miles from the old manor house. And _this_ time your uncle managed to find a witness who had, a day or so before the girl disappeared, seen her talking to a man in a car. Still, without a body he could do nothing."

Dermot nodded.

"Well, then the War started. The young man from the manor was among the first to join up, and he was soon in France. Some time in 1915 an Army party, breaking ground for an encampment near a village about half way between where the two girls had vanished, came across a little skeleton in a shallow grave. There was some cloth -- fragments of a pink cotton dress -- and a charm bracelet. And at the very bottom of the grave -- where you can imagine it might have fallen in and been overlooked by a young man digging a grave in a great hurry, in secret -- was a cuff-link. A cuff-link bearing the arms of of the very Oxford college which the young man from the manor had attended."

"So what did Uncle Henry do?"

"Eventually, he obtained leave to travel to France. Again, he encountered immense argument and delay before orders were sent forward summoning the suspect to Staff HQ for questioning. But he never came. He was killed leading a wiring party, less than an hour before he was due to return. And, once again, the case died with him. His parents dedicated a memorial window in his honour in the village church, and that, I'm afraid, was that."

"And Uncle Henry?"

"What could he do? But I know his failure to prevent the second murder weighs very heavily, to this day. You see, it's all too easy to talk about _a_ murder, as if that makes an end of the matter. But a murder is such a terrible injury to society, it doesn't only destroy the official victim but a legion of others -- the victim's family and friends, anyone who comes under unjust suspicion -- Reuben Jenkins, of course -- but, worst of all, perhaps, is the effect on the murderer himself. Once someone commits a terrible crime and believes he has got away with it, the effect on his vanity can only be described as _diabolical_. And if such a man also has money and influence, who can say how far the damage may spread, if it is not checked."

Dermot would never have considered himself a religious man. But then, he had never before encountered a messenger of the Lord sitting in a chintz-laden Gloucestershire tea-shop, wearing a pink fluffy cardigan and eating scones.

He drew a deep breath.

"Miss Marple, I really shouldn't be talking about this at all with anyone. The Superintendent will have my guts for garters if he hears I've breathed a word. But there's something been troubling me about a case I've been working on at the moment, and I'd be enormously grateful for a second opinion."

Miss Marple's white curls bounced when she nodded. "Mr Craddock, consider me entirely at your service."


	7. Chapter 7

"Oh, goodness, don't worry about that!" His hostess's laugh rang out across the dining room. Sally Phillpotts (née Hakesmere) was a red-faced, jolly person whom one somehow pictured in sensible tweeds even when (as here) she was wearing an impeccable dark-blue grosgrain evening dress with lace trim. 

"Miss Marple's known me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper and used to lead gangs of the village boys on Amazon expeditions through the Bantrys' orchards. Of _course_ you're welcome to come to dinner on however little notice you like. This whole business is just -- if you'll forgive the language -- a complete pile of dung, and the neighbourly thing to do about it is to shift a few spadefuls wherever one can and hope it'll all be cleared up eventually."

"The parable of the Samaritan with the shovel," the Rev. Phillpotts observed, helping himself to asparagus. "Though really, my dear, I'm not _quite_ sure that you've thought that metaphor through, fully. Leaving aside the circumstances, Mr Mansell's company is delightful _in itself_. We are both very fond of Hilary, and any relative of hers is always welcome at the vicarage."

"Well, quite so. I'm sure Mr Mansell's far too sensible to take umbrage at me getting my metaphors in a muddle. Certainly if he's got anything like Hilary's temperament. How she put up with some of the ladies on her roster I really _cannot_ imagine. To say nothing of Elaine Fleming. Anyone might have felt tempted to give _her_ a good slap."

"My _dear_." This time the vicar's voice was more assertive. " _De mortuis_ , you know."

Miss Marple looked up from her Dover sole. "But not here, I'm afraid. I mean -- perhaps I'm expressing myself very badly -- but after all, Elaine Fleming _was_ murdered. And murder is such an extreme business, that it almost has to arise out of some very extreme emotion -- hatred or fear or -- I'm sorry to say -- _greed_. We can only hope to find out how that happened by talking about who might have felt those kind of emotions towards her -- and, as a result, what she might have done to provoke them. So, I'm afraid, we have to put charity on one side for the time being."

"Easier than it ought to be, when it comes to Elaine Fleming." Sally Phillpotts gave a quick, sidelong look at her husband. "Sorry, Edward. But I did not like that woman, and you won't make me change my mind, no matter what anyone tells me she suffered."

"But --" Sam caught sight of Miss Marple's urgent, warning finger, and fell silent.

"Suffered, my dear? Do you mean in her last hours?" Miss Marple's eyes were bright and alert, like a blackbird's.

"Oh, no." Sally shook her head. "I mean, I don't know anything about how she died, but surely, Edward, _you_ must have seen it? After all, with the Parish Council, you saw far more of her than I did."

"Seen what, my dear?" The vicar looked at his wife in frank bafflement. She looked back with the air of a woman who, having pulled a child out of the garden pond, found herself called upon to explain the concept of "sopping".

"Please, do go on. This sounds _most_ significant."

Sally paused for a moment, and then described a circle in the air with the tip of her knife, as if she could trap her thoughts inside it.

"I once saw one of my father's keepers lose half a finger trying to free a badger that had been caught in a poacher's trap. Terrible mess. Well, the first time I met Elaine Fleming was just after the old King had died. We were all in mourning, but she was wearing something impossibly chic in black-and-white which made every other woman in the room look as if she hadn't made enough effort. Anyway, all the way home after that there was something niggling at me, like having something stuck between your teeth that you can't dislodge. And then, just as I got to the vicarage door, I realised what it was. She'd reminded me of that badger."

"The _badger_?" Sam, belatedly, hoped that hadn't come out too rudely. 

Sally nodded. "Yes; I expect it was the outfit at first, but really, there was something about her manner. Like an animal in the most terrible pain and fear, but if you tried to get close enough to help you'd be savaged. And, of course, with that terrifically soignée appearance covering it all up. And after that, of course, I couldn't not see it, every time we met. What's more, I think I wasn't the only one. They used to give these fearful New Year's Eve parties -- of course, Edward and I couldn't _not_ go, though we used to have fun guessing who'd have cried off with 'flu _this_ year -- and Elaine Fleming would circulate, very correctly, and you could see the chill spreading as she approached and people visibly remembering to breathe again when she'd passed along."

"But how interesting." Miss Marple leant forward, across the table. "Did you ever get a hint -- perhaps from the other ladies in the village -- what might lie behind it?"

"Gossip? About Elaine Fleming. You bet!"

"I've frequently mentioned," the vicar said, his lips twitching with amusement, "that running the Wolf Cubs has had a terrible effect on your vocabulary."

Sally, perhaps to prove his point, stuck her tongue out at him. Then her face grew more serious. "Sometimes, I think playing jungle explorer was the best preparation I could have for being a vicar's wife. No, Edward. If you could only sit in on my coffee mornings you'd have more than that one grey hair I saw you squinting at in the mirror this morning; you'd go quite white with shock."

Miss Marple gave her a knowing look. 

"Ah, I can see Mr Mansell and your husband scoffing and thinking about old tabbies inventing tittle-tattle over the coffee cups, but really, my dear, as you'll know yourself, the terrifying thing about village gossip is how often it turns out to be perfectly true!"

Sally tossed back her head. "Oh, yes. Especially in this case. Anyone who took half a look at Julian Fleming would realise that he couldn't possibly be Richard Fleming's son."

"My _dear_. Whatever anyone says, you've no business repeating that as fact. How can you know what Richard Fleming looked like? We've hardly been here three years, and he was killed in 1918."

"Oh, Edward! You don't have to live right on top of someone to know them."

"Quite so," Miss Marple said. "And you did know Major Fleming?"

Sally nodded. "But he wasn't a Major then. Just one of those young men with a good income and connections, and a decent seat on a horse. Very eligible, I suppose, and all that."

She broke off a bit of bread, buttered it, fiddled with it a little and then left it uneaten by the side of her plate.

"Back then, no-one serious hunted this side of the county. That doddery old idiot Murchison was Master of the local pack; he didn't know much himself, but he wouldn't let the hunt servants do their jobs without him interfering. That's what Daddy said, anyway. So lots of extra people came over to hunt with us, and put up with friends or at inns in the district. Richard Fleming was one of those. He stayed to dinner a few times, and also, he would often stop off for a drink or tea if they'd killed near our house. I remember him quite well."

"And what was he like?"

"Odd. No, that's unfair." She pursed her lips, thinking. "Tremendously generous, sometimes. One time I had a bad fall on my pony. Daddy hadn't a bit of sympathy; dusted me off and told me I hadn't broken anything and to get straight back on was the best thing. But Richard Fleming spotted I was really shaken. He insisted on riding home with me, though he'd just swapped onto his second mount. He missed a legendary run, too. But that's what I mean about odd. Next time I saw him he practically ran away. I don't think we got properly back on chatting terms ever."

The little maid was hovering in the doorway; Sally signalled for her to clear the plates.

"Of course," Sally added, after the door had closed behind her, "he was tremendously self-conscious, especially when it came to his good deeds; almost more terrified of people knowing about them than if they'd been the other sort. I think he was pretty devout, but he'd been to one of those frightfully hearty schools where they talk about Christ as if He were the captain of the XV. He might have made a good monk, you know, if he'd been born in the fifteenth century rather than the nineteenth. Flagellated himself for the glory of the Lord in his cell, and concealed the scars under his robe. But, anyway, Edward, since you asked: he had one of those nice, friendly, ugly-monkey faces, and if you think he fathered that _cinquecento_ vision, then you're on your own."

There was a resounding silence. Miss Marple gave a little, old-maidish cough.

"Of course, since Julian Fleming was the acknowledged child of Major Fleming and his wife, _financially_ I don't expect anything anyone said about his parentage could have the smallest effect on him. Emotionally -- well, that is often so very difficult to predict isn't it? Especially since, though his mother no doubt knew all the gossip, and decided to stay on here and face it out, it's most unlikely Julian Fleming would have heard anything about it, at least, not as he was growing up. Young _men_ are much less likely to have spiteful gossip thrust in their faces. At least, not without there being something quite out of the ordinary to provoke it." 

Such as the announcement by the local squire of his engagement to a significantly older and poorer woman, perhaps.

Sam gulped. "But how would Julian Fleming react, if he learnt he wasn't his father's son?"

Miss Marple bobbed her head. "Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It would all depend."

"Depend? On what?"

She opened her forget-me-not blue eyes very wide. "On the circumstances of his -- ah -- conception, of course. After all, given what Sally has just told us -- you always were an extremely observant little girl, dear, I recall that time Tommy Jenkins brought a snake into choir practice, and when everyone else was foolishly running around shrieking about adders you gave a perfectly good description from which we could tell it was one of Professor Blenkinsop's pythons -- anyway, from your descriptions of Elaine and Richard Fleming it does seem rather unpleasantly _suggestive_ , does it not?"

Rev. Phillpotts looked as baffled as Sam felt.

"Suggestive?"

"Well, yes. Sally described a young man capable of acts of considerable generosity, but who then found it almost unbearable to be in the presence of those to whom he had displayed it. And I do understand that after Julian's christening he returned to France; he'd not returned for over two years when he was killed."

"Miss Marple! How can you possibly -- " Sally burst out.

"Well, my dear, I haven't been idle. I bumped into Mrs Lamington --Elaine Fleming's sister, you know -- in the village shop. I mentioned that I was staying at the vicarage and she made a point of showing me the war memorial. We had quite an interesting little chat. She did need to talk about her sister -- grieving people do, you know -- and while of course she was hardly going to share family secrets with a stranger, nevertheless one does pick up hints. Their parents were really rather narrow-minded, censorious sorts of people, though, of course, Mrs Lamington didn't put it quite like that. But while the older girls got away as soon as they could, in their different ways, Elaine, the youngest, was stuck at home. The War came as a priceless opportunity for escape. I know this may sound shocking, but it was so for a lot of women at the time." 

Miss Marple put her head on one side. "I think Mrs Lamington was quite proud of her baby sister, going off to war, without even her parents' blessing. They, I'm sorry to say, predicted disaster from the moment she announced she intended to be a VAD. So foolish; all that does is make a child more determined. And it means that if things do in fact go wrong, they're less likely to swallow their pride and ask for help."

She paused and then added, "I understand the family were surprised but -- given there was a war on, life was _very_ uncertain and the connection was quite irreproachable -- not unhappy when Elaine announced that she was getting married to Richard Fleming on less than a fortnight's notice."

Sally's mouth made an "O". Miss Marple shook her head.

"Mrs Lamington made it _quite_ clear that Julian was, if anything, a little small at birth. Quite consistent with his making his appearance about eight and a half months after his parents' wedding day. That is, she mentioned the date of the wedding and I'd already checked Julian's birth date in the parish register."

She nodded, thoughtfully. "Yes. You described Elaine Fleming as someone who had obviously suffered a very great injury. Given Richard Fleming, who seems to have been an almost *morbidly* generous young man, stepped in to -- ah -- 'lend her the protection of his name' even before --" Miss Marple became a little pinker. "Even before any _necessity_ could have become apparent, I think we may safely conclude the nature of the injury. Julian's real father must have been a very _bad_ man. Which gives rise to all sorts of questions on its own account, does it not?"

Sam blinked. "Do you mean -- that Julian's real father may have returned? And murdered Elaine Fleming?"

The expression in Miss Marple's face could only be described as _pitying_.

"Well, I suppose that's something we shouldn't rule out. But I was rather thinking closer to home. I mean, small children are so very sensitive to anything that strikes them as unsettling about the adults looking after them, and it must have been so difficult, being so close to all that tightly banked down pain and rage, and no doubt coming to feel he was the cause of it all -- and, indeed, with that face he would have been a constant thorn in her flesh, too. Terribly sad, and then, too, terribly dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Sally sounded as if she thought she knew the answer to her question, but was hoping to be proved wrong.

"Well, my dear, what did your father do about the badger you told us about?"

Sally made a face. "Shot it. I was frightfully cut up; I've always been a bit besotted with badgers -- the bishop is, too, funnily enough. But it wouldn't have done any good trying anything else. Not when the poor beast was in too much pain to think straight and would only harm others if it could."

"Quite so, my dear. Quite so."

Her voice was gentle, her well-modulated tones those of a nicely brought up old lady. Sam thought he had never heard anything so inexorable.


	8. Chapter 8

"So what on earth were you closeted with Julian Fleming so long for, after the service?" 

Not for the first time, Sam blessed Sally Phillpotts for her directness, as well as the long acquaintance with Miss Marple which allowed her to exercise it without fear of censure. 

"Hardly closeted, my dear. We were in the churchyard, in full view of everyone; though not, I'm glad to say, within earshot. Despite some very impressive efforts."

"Miss Taylor and the Hon. Lavinia? Shameless, weren't they?"

"Not having your advantages of proximity, naturally they were forced to improvise." Miss Marple sounded severe, but the twinkle in her eye belied her words. "Though I'm afraid they wouldn't have been much the wiser if they *had* eavesdropped. I wondered what the effect might be on Mr Fleming if I mentioned a case from St Mary Mead, some years ago, which seemed to show certain parallels."

"And?"

"Oh, very interesting. Ye-es, I think it made a distinct impression. Of course, what happens now --"

There came a rapid knocking on the front door. Sally cocked her head on one side. 

"I'd better get it. Edward will be in his study, dead to the world, and I gave Mary the evening off -- her aunt isn't well, and we always have cold supper on Sundays, anyway. Besides, I know that kind of knock --"

"Go at once, my dear. Don't mind us."

Left alone with Miss Marple, Sam cast her an imploring look.

"Have you found anything -- anything at all -- to help Hilary?"

She opened her eyes very wide. "Oh, a very great deal. I've been talking to all sorts of people -- the Matron from the Cottage Hospital, for instance."

"The Matron? But she despised Hilary!"

"Hardly that. I would say she was alarmed by her and a little resentful of her -- not wholly without cause. Your aunt -- it's something I've noticed often among surgeons, you know, and your aunt is and always will be more of a surgeon than she is a general practitioner -- does have the slightest tendency to undervalue expertise in fields which are not her own."

Hot, defensive words sprung to his lips, and died there. James, after some _bêtise_ last year on Hilary's part, showing that she only had the faintest grasp of what an interior decorator did or why it mattered, had said much the same.

Miss Marple nodded, just as if he had spoken. "Running a cottage hospital is by no means an easy task. Especially not with the calibre of nurses available here. In any event, the Matron recognised your aunt's talents as a doctor. Indeed, she was quite anxious to let me know that without Dr Mansell's expertise and determination, Julian Fleming would have died."

"Generous of her."

"Indeed so, Mr Mansell. Especially in the circumstances. But she was particularly interesting on the subject of Mr Fleming himself. He was under her care for some weeks, after the Clyde Summers released him and before he was well enough to convalesce at home."

"Did she like him?"

"A good deal, I gather. She made a particular mention of how good he was with the patients on the children's ward; so difficult, of course, being ill at that age -- the combination of discomfort and boredom is particularly acute. The Matron was full of stories about how he would keep little Betty and Christine amused for hours together -- doing imitations and conjuring coins from their ears and silk scarves from mid-air and all that sort of thing."

Learning Fleming had been the life and soul of the party was hardly to Sam's taste. 

"Sounds like a perfect paragon."

Miss Marple shot him a very piercing look. "Not entirely, I understand. He did have one habit which no nurse could abide for a second; he would fiddle with things that weren't any business of his. I understand the Matron was driven to speak quite sharply to him, after she'd caught him trying to get at his own case-notes. She always felt he bore a grudge about that -- he sent her a bottle of most unsuitable scent for Christmas, something very expensive, heavy and vampy, and she thought that was probably what was behind it. It is the kind of joke a particular type of young man does think very funny, of course, when dealing with an older unmarried woman."

Sam sincerely hoped Miss Marple didn't think he was that particular type of young man, whatever it was. 

"In any event, that gave me some ideas -- one of the weak spots in the police case, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, is why did so _much_ hyoscine go missing from your aunt's dispensary? Your aunt, of course, was fully aware of the lethal dose. And, if she had taken it from her stocks, why not alter her dispensary records to account for it?"

"Alter the dispensary records?" Sam's voice, it struck him half a second later, sounded almost more shocked than it had at the initial accusation of murder.

"Well, my dear, there have been a number of cases of weak-willed doctors slipping about drugs. Morphine and so forth. And it's particularly dangerous, because it's so easy for someone in that position to tamper with the poisons book, so no-one knows how much they might be taking. D.C. Craddock was most struck by that point, when I made it to him. Fortunately the dispensary has been shut up since your aunt's arrest. That made his search for fingerprints so much easier."

"Fingerprints?"

"Yes; Julian Fleming's. Very useful indeed. Though I -- ah -- I was able to assist with one or two suggestions as to where they might most probably be found."

"But -- he and Hilary were engaged. He was probably in and out all the time --"

"In her surgery, right on the High Street? When he was a patient of Dr Lowe? When they seem to have been trying to keep the engagement dark from everyone? No, Mr Mansell, that is very unlikely indeed. Not as a _general_ rule. No; I expect we will be able to identify precisely when the visit took place. And then --"

The door opened about a foot. Sally put her head around it.

"Can the two of you come down at once, please? It's Lisa Clare, she's in the most tremendous stew, and she says she has to talk to you both, at once."

With unexpected tact, Sally made herself scarce once she had shown them into the smaller drawing room where Lisa was sitting. Her version of "being in the most tremendous stew", Sam noted with relief, did not involve tears or histrionics: just a brittle, self-conscious impersonation of her normal serenity. 

"I'm so sorry to disturb you," Lisa began immediately, "but I'm worried out of my mind. You know Agnes Jackson, that maid who found Elaine Fleming? Well, at the inquest I caught her looking at Rupert, sort of sideways, screwing up her courage. That horrid Mrs Theobald spotted her, too. She'd obviously leapt to her own conclusions and of course, it was _nothing_ like that --"

Sam suppressed a snort of disbelief. One only had to _see_ Rupert Clare, with his air of battle-weary, Continental sophistication to know it must have been _exactly_ like that.

"Don't look like that, Mr Mansell," Miss Marple said. "I assure you, husbands and wives frequently understand each other far better than modern novelists and -- ah -- the makers of films would have us believe. Besides, I've met Agnes. She's very bright -- I don't think she'd have gone into service at all if her mother had lived -- and also very sincere. She's not at all the kind of girl who would make use of a serious event like the inquest for that kind of purpose. Still less if she spotted Mrs Theobald watching."

"So what was it?"

"She came up afterwards," Lisa said. "She'd seen that thing on Pathé -- you know, the rather frightful bit on war reporters they did the year before last. So she recognised Rupert and assumed he was here officially, for the paper. People never seem to think that journalists ever do things on their own account, off duty." 

Lisa screwed her face up into a rueful grimace. 

"I'm not quite sure they're wrong ... But she called me this afternoon, from a call-box -- she probably took the chance on her way back from church -- and asked me to tell Rupert she needed to see him as soon as possible, and to come to the keeper's cottage on the Larch Hill estate. I didn't ask anything, because Rupert's terribly secretive about what he calls 'sources', even to me; given the stories he does usually, he can't afford not to be. So I passed on the message and he went out, and he's not been back --" 

Her voice trembled for a second; she steadied it with a visible effort. "There's another thing. He's got a gun. It's an old Service revolver, it was his uncle's. I know where he keeps it. When he didn't come back, I checked. It's missing."

"And where do you think he may have gone with it?" 

Lisa bit her lip. "After Julian Fleming."

"Ah!" Miss Marple nodded, like someone who sees a game of patience coming out. "Did Agnes suspect young Fleming?" 

"Well, not when we saw her after the inquest. And she couldn't talk to Rupert long, not with the Larch Hill housekeeper waiting to pounce in case she stepped out of place. But I don't think she likes him very much. He's one of those people who thinks he's being terribly insouciant and charming and spontaneous, and really they're creating all sorts of muddles that some woman ends up clearing up, only they mustn't let him _suspect_ they're clearing up after him, in case it hurts his delicate feelings."

Miss Marple pursed her lips. "Is that what Agnes told your husband, or what you think yourself?"

"I suppose -- a little of both." Lisa's brittleness eased under the influence of Miss Marple's perceptiveness. "That is, I haven't wanted to say anything to Hilary -- it never does any good, anyway -- but he really has been colossally selfish. Every time she's wanted him to do something -- quite sensible, ordinary things, like telling his mother or making job plans -- he's somehow managed to scupper it and make it all her fault."

Sam recalled Hilary's tension when the hotel manager told her there was a call from Gloucestershire. His fists clenched.

"Ah, yes." Miss Marple's tone was that of infinite experience. "And do you know what Agnes may have told your husband today?"

"I don't know. But I don't think he'd have taken the gun just to meet Agnes. Maybe, after they'd met, he came back to get it? There were about twenty minutes when I was down at the far end of the garden, gathering raspberries, and I _thought_ I heard a door bang in the house, but when I got in, there was no-one there. Oh, God, it reminds me of one time, in Berlin, and I just can't stand the waiting, not again."

Miss Marple reached out and covered Lisa's small white hands with her own dry, blue-veined ones.

"Don't distress yourself, my dear. You think Agnes may have told your husband Fleming was about to make a run for it, and he's followed him?"

"Not exactly. But -- there's a place --" Lisa gulped, steadied herself, and started again. "There's a cave over at Mott's Farm -- actually, a bit more than that. A cavern system, with stalactites and things. It's mostly flooded; no-one knows how far down it goes. The farm people have rigged up lights and so forth, to show visitors."

"But why on earth would he go there?"

Her hair was silky smooth; it caught the light oddly as she moved her head. 

"I gather Julian Fleming's always been queer about it. Hilary told me about it. He's taken her there, twice. It sounded absolutely horrible, both times. Look, could I possibly have a cigarette?"

Sam, conscious of dereliction of duty, pulled out his cigarette case and lit one for her. Lisa inhaled, deeply, but then made a face and stubbed it out in the ash-tray.

"Sorry. I keep thinking it'll taste like it used to, and it doesn't. Where was I? Oh, yes. The last time was the night they got engaged. Julian came over to my house in an absolute state; he was walking like a sleepwalker, and nothing I said could reach him at all. So when Hilary got in I told her to go after him, whatever happened. And it felt like hours I was waiting, and waiting, and then when they did come back -- I'm not sure even Hilary saw me -- but they were both soaked and trailing mud -- the only thing that came into my mind, you know, it's idiotic, but it looked like that bit in _The Waste Land_."

Eliot was one of James's passions; Sam knew the poem backwards. The image hit him like a blow:

" _—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,  
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not   
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither   
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing..._"

"And they had been to the cave?" Miss Marple prompted.

"Yes." Lisa paused for a moment. "I think -- piecing it together, from something Hilary said later -- Julian must have tried to drown himself in the lake. In front of her. It all sounded absolutely dreary and terrifying. Oh, I do wish they'd never met."

" _Fear death by water_ ," Sam said aloud.

Miss Marple got to her feet. "I am most perturbed; no, really, very much so. If only someone had said Julian Fleming was that type -- oh, my dear, I know why you felt you couldn't betray a confidence, but this changes matters entirely. We have to go there. Mr Mansell, would you be good enough to find Mrs Phillpotts and ask her if she's able to drive us over to Mott's Farm _at once_. Do impress upon her it is the gravest emergency."

"*Mrs* Phillpotts?"

Miss Marple looked at him with a pitying expression.

"Yes, Mr Mansell. To get us to Mott's Farm before something terrible happens we will have to use all possible short-cuts and, I'm afraid, display very little regard for the speed limit. It would be neither safe nor seemly for a man of the cloth to drive in that way, and you have no local knowledge. In any event, you need to follow after, with the police."

Sam opened his mouth and then shut it again. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Lisa's sympathetic glance.

Out of her capacious handbag Miss Marple extracted a piece of paper with a telephone number scribbled on it in pencil.

"Detective-Constable Craddock is staying at the _Feathers_. If you can't speak to him on the telephone, you must find him in person, yourself. It is _most_ important."

"Detective-Constable Craddock," Sam repeated.

"Quite so. Tell him the police have to go after Rupert Clare and Julian Fleming at once. I'm afraid -- I very much _hope_ I'm wrong, but we cannot afford to assume that -- that Fleming must now be quite _desperate_ and desperate men are terribly dangerous. Oh, and the police must put a guard on Agnes Jackson. She's clearly remembered something important she'd noticed, and if Fleming realises and doubles back she's going to be in the most terrible danger. Now. Don't wait about. We simply don't have any time to waste."


	9. Chapter 9

"Yes; here would be an excellent place to dispose of a body, Fleming."

The cavern's natural acoustics amplified Rupert's voice. On the edge of the smooth expanse of water that filled half the great rocky space, Fleming turned. Rupert gripped the revolver. Its solid weight in his hand was comforting, even though a detached part of his mind reproved himself for melodrama. 

The boy paused before responding, his timing just a shade too self-conscious. Maliciously, Rupert thought his reputation as an actor might be a trifle overstated.

"Clare, isn't it? I find that comment in remarkably poor taste, given the circumstances." His voice was a County drawl, exaggerated to the point of insolence. Doubtless it played well in Gloucestershire. 

"You'll have to forgive me, Fleming. Perhaps I've spent too long on the Continent. Dealing with Hitler's thugs and party lackeys tends to coarsen one to the niceties."

"I'll say." Fleming laughed: mirthless, affected and scornful.

Rupert flicked on the safety catch and dropped the revolver into his coat pocket. His hands held out so Fleming could see they were empty, he stepped forward into the light.

"Look, Fleming, do you care two straws about Hilary?"

"Of course I do!" His voice resumed a more conversational register, with a note of self-pity Rupert judged equally natural. "She's the only good thing that's ever happened to me! If only mother hadn't -- "

Regrettably, he checked himself before revealing more.

Rupert exhaled. "Then why the devil, Fleming, don't you do the decent thing and go to the police?"

"I've _tried_ with the police. They didn't listen --"

"That's because you came to them with a cock-and-bull story about _eau de noyaux_ and an accidental cyanide overdose, which would have sounded pretty thin even if it weren't straight out of a shilling shocker. To say nothing of being flatly contradicted by all the evidence. All you managed to do was give the Superintendent the idea that you thought Hilary was guilty and were nobly covering up for her. Whereas if you went back with the truth --"

"What truth? Look here, Clare, have you been talking to that old tabby who seems to be hanging around with Hilary's nephew?"

Rupert's world swung, abruptly, askew. "You've _spoken_ to Miss Marple?" 

"Is that what she's called? I can't stand these dried-up spinsters who just want to devour every bit of gossip. They're vampires, all of them."

No reason to interrupt him when he was so close to revealing himself.

"She came up to me after church -- I can't pray, not properly, not in church, only here -- but I thought if I missed communion, people would say things worse than they're saying already, and it wouldn't do Hilary any good. And I even asked the vicar to read the banns -- we're engaged, you know, we should have been married already, if Hilary hadn't had silly worries about people thinking we had to, but I didn't want people saying we were some sort of hole-in-corner Rattenbury business, but he told me the police had told him not to -- how could they do that?"

Could any man genuinely be so naive? Of course the police would have told the local vicar not to read the banns. Spouses are forbidden to give evidence against each other. Fleming's attempt would only have confirmed their suspicions.

"What did Miss Marple say?" 

"What? Oh, a lot of rot. About some simple-minded gardener in her village, who'd had an over-protective mother and laid her out with a navvy's beetle when she'd found him walking out with the cook at the Hall, and then tried to fake a burglary but got it all wrong. But it's the way she said it; like she was looking into me all the time. Tell me, Clare, did they teach you the classics at whatever school it was you went to?"

Westminster, as a matter of fact: they'd parted with mutual loathing and a mutual desire never to meet again. 

"They might have done, if I'd been paying attention."

Fleming's stance relaxed, minutely. "Well, it probably wouldn't mean much to you, then, but she put me in mind of one of the Furies, in a rather experimental German production I saw last year."

So, so, close to a confession -- provided one could rely on a jury of Gloucestershire locals being familiar with the plot of the _Oresteia_. 

"You know, Fleming, hyoscine's tomfool stuff to use. Outside the big ferry ports chemists tend not to stock it routinely. Also, it's not something like cyanide or nicotine that a lay-person might have for photography or getting greenfly off the roses. A doctor's poison, too. Everyone over forty thinks of Crippen when they hear the word hyoscine. Did you _intend_ to sacrifice Hilary to keep your yellow neck from the gallows?"

Fleming swung a wild haymaker punch at him, almost losing his footing on the wet rock. Rupert dodged back, out of range, and pulled out the gun.

"Not a stage prop, I assure you. So don't make me do something we'll both regret. Go on, Fleming. We're almost there. Confession's good for the soul, they tell me."

"It's no use, I tell you." This time the desperation in Fleming's voice sounded wholly genuine. "I'm no good -- I should have known that from the start -- I've got bad blood and everything I touch turns rotten. Mother knew that from the first. It's not her fault, it was my father, he was an awful man and she was terrified I'd turn out like him, and so I have. But the other Friday I told her I didn't care what she said, I was going to marry Hilary and that was that. So that made her mind up. She'd said it before, but then I hadn't believed her. But she was really going to do it; she was going to get hold of this Harley Street man who specialises in nerves, and have me sent away for my own protection -- oh, she called it a rest-cure or something, but it was obvious what she meant, and even if I'd gone along with it, and it really had been only for a few weeks it would have ruined everything."

"Why?" The question came out without conscious thought. Rupert cursed himself in case he had broken the spell. Luckily, in the luxury of pouring out his feelings, Fleming was too far gone to notice.

"Why? Good God, man, you can't expect Hilary to put up with being tied to a man who's publicly been labelled a lunatic, can you? And another thing -- I've not told anyone else this -- that very day I'd had my papers for the RAF (I was in the Squadron at Oxford, but I never told Mother) and they absolutely won't let you fly if you've ever been diagnosed with anything of that sort, even small stuff like getting into a funk over Finals and landing in the Warneford for a week."

Rupert, who had been in Guernica during the raids, privately thought it an odd scruple that the minds directing aerial bombardment insist their hands be sane. This time he managed not to express his feelings.

"So, you see, I was completely out of options. I had to do something. I'd stolen the hyoscine weeks ago, from Hilary's surgery. She didn't see. A stage magician I'd happened across at Oxford taught me how to palm things. I thought it might come in handy for Prospero or the Erl King or something. With everything going on, it was comforting knowing I'd got it, if you know what I mean."

Rupert did. Rather better, he suspected, than Fleming himself.

"I didn't intend to use it on Mother, not at first. I fobbed her off -- said at least I'd talk to this London man, and that while I hoped she'd come round to my marrying Hilary, I wouldn't press the point until I'd seen him and heard what he had to say. And she agreed -- called the maid for coffee and so forth. But she looked at me. She has -- had -- a way of doing that. So I knew I'd not got away from anything, just postponed it. So it had to be that night. You see why, of course?"

Fortunately, Fleming galloped on without expecting Rupert to respond. There were some hypocrisies no man should be expected to manage.

"I managed to put quite a lot of the sleepy stuff she normally uses into her coffee -- the palming trick again, of course. And I talked her into having a liqueur -- _eau de noyaux_ \-- and letting me top it up. Twice. That's supposed to make the sleepy stuff more effective. But when I went into her bedroom to see her, later that night, she was perfectly all right, asleep, on her back and snoring, like some fat tripper in a Bank Holiday excursion carriage."

In other circumstances, Fleming's discombobulation at having surprised his mother in an inelegant attitude might have been funny. Rupert's spine crawled.

"So--?" he prompted, as the pause dragged on.

"So I went and found a syringe Mother used for neuralgia -- filled it with the hyoscine and injected it under her hair, behind her ear." 

He gave a disconcerting little giggle. "Not into the ear, of course, though you couldn't have told differently, even from the front row of the stalls. _The play's the thing --_ After that, it seemed to take hardly any time. I waited until her breath didn't show on her compact mirror and then went back to my room."

The drip, drip of water from the roof of the cavern intruded itself on Rupert's hearing for the first time. Once heard, it could not be shut out. The small, regular, relentless sound added a touch of horror to proceedings. Fleming seemed oblivious of it.

"I'd arranged to go riding next morning because I knew Mother planned to sleep late. So I threw the syringe into a ditch on my way over to Pascoes and went out for my ride. I thought that would help, if anyone suspected anything, behaving normally and so forth. In _Notable British Trials_ , they always seem to make a point of the -- of the person who did it not wanting to be alone, afterwards."

Thank God for the dim light in the cavern. Rupert's mind was working furiously, running on verification and corroboration. When had Fleming read _Notable British Trials_? And where? Booksellers and librarians had sharp eyes and retentive memories. That man Carley would know whom to ask. And searching the ditches. A horrible job, but a possible one. Thank God for the dry weather.

Fleming continued on. 

"Oh, yes, I forgot -- after the ride I rang Hilary, from Pascoes. Naturally, I wasn't going to tell her anything -- that old cat at the exchange always listens in -- but I thought it might be useful if she remembered us having had a perfectly ordinary conversation, in case anyone asked her, later. But the maid at her digs told me she'd gone up to London, without telling me anything about it."

He sounded like a child about to stamp its foot and declare something, "Not FAIR." Rupert reflected how lucky Hilary had been. Had she not been away in Town -- if the maids had discovered the body earlier -- Fleming would of course have summoned her at once. Had she once entered Larch Hill that morning, not all Miss Marple's ingenuity could have saved her from the suspicion that it was she who had abstracted the hypodermic to cover her tracks.

"So I went home, the slow route. But they still hadn't found her -- I think one of the maids had looked in, thought she was asleep and decided she must be having one of her headaches, so everyone was tiptoeing around. It completely put me on edge, but I don't think anyone noticed. Anyway, I said to tell her when she woke up that I'd gone over to Oxford, so I drove over there and caught up with some of the Squadron people and they finally got a telegram through to us at the Randolph. The police were at the Hall, and I could tell what they were thinking -- it was all going to be all right, just as I'd planned it would, and then -- "

He fell silent at last. 

"And then they opened the post-bag," Rupert concluded, with a tinge of malice. 

"Look, how could I have known Mother had already written to the Harley Street man? You'd couldn't have told that from how she acted over coffee."

"Perhaps you get your talents from both sides of your family, Fleming."

Somehow, that got through when everything else had broken on the man's utter self-absorption. He backed away, towards the time-sculpted pillar of rock dividing the inner from the outer cave. Rupert kept him covered. He had the confession he had come for, if by methods which would doubtless have the likes of Miss Marple reaching for her sal volatile. Getting him out of the cave -- for the first time Rupert started to think of that as not just possible, but almost easy. All the fight had gone out of the boy. Another step back and he would be literally against the wall. He was reaching behind him for its support even now.

The cave exploded into dazzling light: reds, greens and the vividest possible blue for the lake. Julian Fleming stood illuminated in the full blaze of the floodlights, entranced and entrancing, a lord in his own domain.

The image hung in his vision for one eternal second. Then darkness descended.

He must have cried out in shock. 

He fired: a desperate, instinctive, useless reflex. The muzzle-flash spiralled across his vision in an agony of stars; the blast echoed on and on, reverberating off the cavern walls. 

Fleming grabbed his right wrist and twisted. His fingers opened involuntarily, releasing the gun. He heard a faint splash as it hit the water. Then wiry hands found his neck. 

The boy had the strength of youth, of madness and of utter desperation. He forced Rupert backwards, step by step. God, the pressure on his neck -- if he blacked out now he was a dead man -- Lisa would never forgive him and Fleming would get away -- oh, but the rock floor was so slippery underfoot, the must be on the very edge of the water: a last chance, a fool's chance, a dead man's chance --

With the last of his strength Rupert hooked his foot round the back of Fleming's knee, and, at the same time, headbutted him as hard as he could. He caught a muffled yelp as his forehead connected with something soft -- nose, probably -- and Fleming's chokehold broke. But it was too late; they were falling, unstoppably, but Fleming was underneath --

The shock as they hit the water drove every breath from his lungs. Cold pain spiked through face and temples, a toothache writ large. His heart felt about to burst. 

He clawed at the boy's collar, got purchase and broke the surface long enough to gasp a vital lungful of air. Fleming's arm flailed up, hitting Rupert's nose. They went under again. 

_The dark backward and abysm of time_.

"Up" and "down" lost all meaning. He struck out with feet and hands, and found neither bottom nor wall. Fleming clung round his body, still as a corpse, but for his relentless grip. Were they sinking or floating?

Up above, far above, the lights came on. Their faint yellow glow -- the sun, as if seen from Pluto -- filtered down through unimaginable fathoms of water. Hope. Something to aim for. He kicked, once, twice. Fleming caught at his legs, but that feeble effort to retard him redoubled his strength. Five strokes -- three - one. He broke through the surface, spluttering, and somehow floundered into the shallows, where he lay panting, gasping and utterly spent.

From somewhere above his head came a confusion of voices and the sound of running feet.

"No, don't try anything!" "He's gone, no-one could live long in water that cold." "Banged his head, diving under, most like, and knocked himself out." "No-one's come back up our way, sir. I'll swear to that. He's a goner for sure."

Rupert, his ears ringing, tried to sit up. 

"Don't try that just yet, that was a nasty bang you took." A second later a tweed-clad man strode into his line of sight. "Dermot Craddock. CID. Sorry I couldn't get to you sooner, but that light trick caught us on the hop." 

He sounded rueful. "Not that it should have done, Miss Marple dropped us a broad enough hint Fleming might try something of the sort. She and your wife have been up at the farm with Mr Mott, standing over the fuse-box like two mother hens with one chick."

 _Lisa_. Rupert let his head drop back and shut his eyes. Only that pestilential ladder to navigate -- doubtless the police had ropes and perhaps a stout constable or two to help him up it -- and then he would be with Lisa, holding her in his arms, and able to rest at last.

\----

"You were most foolish, Mr Clare." Miss Marple looked sternly at him over top of her knitting. "Dashing off like that to confront a murderer. Most irresponsible for a man in your situation. You have three people to consider now, you know." 

She looked fondly at Lisa, who was curled up like a cat on the sofa, her hands clamped round a mug of cocoa.

Clare blinked. "It's hardly as if I have the safest of jobs at the best of times. And I can't simply chuck that in because of the baby."

"Indeed not, Mr Clare. It would be quite wrong of you to do so. The world needs brave journalism like yours. But, if I may say so, I don't suppose you would have gone rushing into a confrontation with one of Herr Hitler's thugs, or one of Signor Mussolini's without telling anyone where you had gone, and you _certainly_ wouldn't have allowed them to get close enough to disarm you. Or throw you in a lake, for that matter."

She put down her knitting and took a sip of tea. "But I am very much afraid, Mr Clare, that because Julian Fleming was what in _my_ day we thought of as a 'greenery-yallery' sort of man, you underestimated how dangerous he might be when cornered. Nevertheless, he was a murderer, and murderers of whatever stripe are very dangerous people."

Lisa raised her head from her mug. "That's telling you, Rupe." 

He stretched out and stroked his hand down the back of hers.

"I'll make sure to bear it in mind. Go on, Miss Marple."

She favoured the company with an indulgent smile. Sam -- torn between the impulses to leap up and kiss her or bursting into tears with sheer relief -- got up and made rather a business of attending to drinks. Clare accepted a large brandy, Miss Marple allowed him to pour her a small _crème de menthe_ , Lisa gave him a smiling dismissal and he, for his own part, shot a generous measure of whisky into his glass.

"Well, you see, I spoke to some of the people from the Amateur Dramatic Society. One of the things I'd noticed, almost what you might call a *motif* running through this whole business was the notion of _acting_ and _the theatre_."

She gestured with the knitting needles.

"Practically the first thing you told me about Julian Fleming was that you remembered him from OUDS; your aunt said something similar, too."

Sam nodded. "He was a very big star, in Oxford terms. Bigger, really, considering he always played character parts, not romantic leads, so he had to work harder to stand out."

"Did he, indeed? Most suggestive, yes. And I gather he told your aunt he'd ambitions to play Iago." 

Miss Marple looked expectantly at her audience, as if that explained everything. They plainly failed to come up to her standards. She gave a little "tsk" and resumed.

"Then there was that letter Elaine Fleming wrote to the psychiatrist, the evening of her death. That very nice, very sensible Detective-Constable Craddock did let me take a look at that, and one of the things that struck me was the way she had written the word 'stage' -- she'd pressed down so hard, her nib had broken through the paper. Suggestive again, of course."

"Suggestive of what?" Clare took a swig of brandy and grimaced.

Miss Marple's faded, forget-me-not blue eyes opened very wide indeed. "As I said, Mr Clare; a _motif_. You will, of course, recall Greek actors always wore masks to perform, and even now the comic and tragic masks are used on theatre façades and so forth, as decoration. Well. Julian Fleming was a _very_ good looking young man -- indeed, it was the first thing anyone ever noticed about him. Almost to the exclusion of anything else; I don't suppose anyone bothered to ask what he was thinking very often."

"I don't think he _was_ thinking very often." Sam was still bitter about how close Hilary had come to death, even though Carley was on his way over to Gloucester to fetch her home at this very moment.

"That, if I may say so, Mr Mansell, is the mistake many people made." Her eyes twinkled. "The mask again, you see. His mother, I gather, picked up on that very early on -- I had some most _enlightening_ talks with her sister, Mrs Lamington. Oh, of course Andre O'Connell, Julian Fleming's _real_ father, treated Mrs Fleming atrociously and I've no patience for people who excuse that sort of thing on the grounds that it was all for love. But her objection to her son having anything to do with the stage was much more practical than an irrational horror of his father's profession. 

"Mrs Lamington told me her sister Elaine had, from a very early stage, been very distressed not merely by her son's facility for getting out of trouble by trading on his looks, but by his ability to _stage manage_ situations to his advantage. There was one phrase which Mrs Lamington used which was quite telling, what was it? Oh, yes, ' _When Julian set out to tell a lie, he lived it utterly._ ' The way a very good actor inhabits a part, you see."

Sam made a quick, silent prayer of thanksgiving that Fleming had taken the coward's way out. Even given the confession Clare had extorted, a man with those talents might still have bedazzled a jury. 

He rose to refresh his glass from the bottles on the sideboard. Still with his back to the assembled company, too low to be heard above the buzz of conversation, he murmured,

" _He said, 'He has a lovely face. God in his mercy lend him grace._ "


	10. Chapter 10

Despite three baths in quick succession, and copious applications of Lisa's generously offered _Jean Patou_ , Hilary still had the prison's disinfectant and slop bucket stench in her nostrils. Her overstretched nerves made her want to scream at everyone and anyone within range, especially this fluffy old maid, who insisted on talking to her and to whom she must, on no account, be rude, because according to Sam's somewhat incoherent explanation this Miss Marple was apparently the reason that she was here, wrapped in an eiderdown in her own sitting room, and not in the women's wing of Gloucester Gaol awaiting trial for murder.

But if only the old dear would stop prattling.

"Now, my dear, I know this is not something you want to hear, but that's because you've had a very bad shock and you're still getting over it. But if you are going to get over it properly, it is very important that you face up to the truth as soon as possible, and don't allow things to fester and do a great deal more harm. I'm sure as a doctor you must see the wisdom in that."

A doctor? Hilary supposed she had been, once. No-one would engage her now. The acknowledgement of the police that they'd been wrong to arrest her could only go so far. Even though she had never stood trial she would be forever guilty at the bar of public opinion in this gossipy country district. She would most certainly have to sell the practice, and what would become of her then? And why, oh God, did Miss Marple carry on talking, when any person with an ounce of sensitivity would have realised long ago that Hilary was wishing her gone?

"In any event, I think you need to appreciate one very important fact, my dear. Whatever he may have thought and whatever he may have assured you, that really very foolish and wicked young man was _not_ in love with you. No -- " 

She raised a black-gloved hand in a silencing gesture, though Hilary had made no move to interrupt. 

"I know what you want to say, but look at his actions. However much he may have told himself that killing his mother was the only way you could both be free of her influence, look how he set about doing it. No-one with an ounce of _real_ respect for you would have stolen the hyoscine from your surgery; it was bound to be traced and then, of course, the police would be sure to suspect you."

"He probably didn't think of that at all." In her own ears, Hilary's voice sounded hopeless. "Julian is -- was -- very like a child in some ways."

Miss Marple gave a reproving "tsk". "But children, my dear, have to grow up. It does no good to a child to let him think the world is going to make a special exception just for him. I don't know if you care for the Pre-Raphaelites -- very old-fashioned now, of course, and sometimes almost *lurid* in their use of colour, dear me, yes, but the moment I saw Julian Fleming, he brought to mind a painting I saw once on a visit to Liverpool. Mr Waterhouse's _Echo and Narcissus_. The beautiful young man so in love with his own reflection he didn't even notice the girl wasting away to a shadow, and all for love of him. Very like Jerome Mortimer -- oh, you don't know him, my dear, but he was a locum doctor we had in St Mary Mead, years ago."

Hot tears pricked behind Hilary's eyes. She blinked them away and looked up.

"I suppose I've made a complete fool of myself."

"No, my dear, not at all -- or at least, no more than any young person in love. I daresay you were busy studying and didn't have time for all this kind of thing when you were seventeen or so, so it hit you all the harder when it came along later."

Despite herself, Hilary laughed out loud. "You make it sound like chickenpox."

Miss Marple's eyes twinkled. "And a very sensible way of thinking of it, if I may say so. A bad bout and now you're on the mend. And you're quite right in thinking of selling up -- the proceeds from the practice and the estate combined should leave you with a _very_ comfortable bank balance to support you while you look around for something better suited to those clever hands and brain of yours."

"The _estate_? I'm sorry, I don't know what --"

"Oh, my dear, did no-one tell you? Mr Fleming left his entire fortune to you. His mother only had a life interest in her late husband's estate, and though of course as her murderer he couldn't inherit any of her _own_ fortune -- her sisters will get that -- that doesn't stop the house and the land passing to whomever he chose. But I must be going. You've had a terrible time, and by far the best thing for you now is rest."

**Author's Note:**

> A downloadable ebook version of this story is available at [ my website ](ajhall.shoesforindustry.net)
> 
> Thanks to caulkhead for betaing and support; thanks to Techsupportbear for technical assistance and yet further support.
> 
> This work was inspired by (but far too late for) the 2014 Renault Fanworks Exchange; check out other works posted in the exchange either here at AO3 or via the [ RenaultX Dreamwidth community. ](renaultx.dreamwidith.org)
> 
> Ben Carley appears in Josephine Tey's _The Franchise Affair_ as do Blair, Heywood and Bennett.


End file.
